Commons Sitting of 10 February 1965

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
DEATH OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL
  Message of Condolence
  Mr. Speaker: I have to report to the House that I have received a message of sadness and sympathy on the death of Sir Winston Churchill from the Speaker of the Legislative Council of Fiji on behalf of that body.

  PRIVATE BUSINESS
  WELSH SHIPPING AGENCY BILL [Lords] (By Order)
  Third Reading deferred till Tuesday next.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

    Warble Fly
    Mr. Kitsonasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he intends to take to assist the warble fly eradication campaign; and if he will make a statement.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Mackie): A vigorous advisory and publicity campaign aimed at persuading farmers to adopt methods for the control of the warble fly was started by my Department last autumn, the best time to treat cattle with systemic insecticides. It will be continued in the spring when systemic or derris dressing will be recommended as appropriate, and renewed in time to encourage preventive dressing in the coming autumn.
    A National Warble Fly Campaign Committee, representative of the Farmers'
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    Unions, the hide and leather trades, and other interested organisations, has been set up at the instigation of the Ministry, and I hope that this Committee will supplement the Ministry's efforts to arouse an awareness among stock owners that the warble fly pest can and should be eliminated.
    Mr. Kitson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that organophosperous systemic insecticides are subject to a 15 per cent. surcharge? Will he urge the Chancellor of the Exchequer to remove this tax from them?
    Mr. Mackie: I have some knowledge of the amount required to dress one animal, and I do not imagine that, even with the expert statisticians we have in the Ministry, we could calculate the amount which has been put on to the price by the surcharge.

    Exports of Live Animals
    Mr. Shepherdasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will state the total exports of live animals other than for breeding or dairy purposes, and excluding exports from Northern Ireland to the Irish Republic, in the year 1963.
    Mr. John Mackie: 28,251 cattle. The returns for other animals do not distinguish between breeding and other stock. The figures are 89,254 sheep and goats and 4,245 pigs.
    Mr. Shepherd: Does not that mean that we are exporting many thousands of live animals for slaughter each year, and is the hon. Gentleman proposing to do anything to substitute carcase trade for this live trade?
    Mr. Mackie: It is a quite considerable export. The difficulty is that our buyers abroad, as the hon. Gentleman knows, like the meat on the hoof. The Balfour assurances, that is, the assurances given by the importing countries, are such as to protect animals as far as we possibly can from any ill treatment in transit.
    Mr. Soames: On both sides of the House and within the hon. Gentleman's own Department, there is a feeling that the more we can switch from the export of live animals to the export of carcases the better this will be from every point of view. Is the hon. Gentleman thinking in

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    these terms and considering taking action likely to lead to an accentuation of the trend?
    Mr. Mackie: We are always prepared to look at improvements, but, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, if the customer wants it the other way, it takes a while to persuade him. We are looking at the matter, but it is a problem.

    Anti-Dumping
    Mr. Peter Walkerasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will consult the President of the Board of Trade with a view to revising and improving the anti-dumping machinery.
    The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Fred Peart): Safeguards against injurious dumping are provided by the Customs Duties (Dumping and Subsidies) Act, 1957, which is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. If the hon. Member has any particular difficulties in mind and will let me have the details, I will consult with my right hon. Friend as necessary.
    Mr. Walker: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the statement by his hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary last week that the import of eggs, for example, from Eastern Europe, is so small as not to make a difference has, by its complacency, caused a good deal of disturbance in the industry? Will he on this issue at least ensure that the Board of Trade has ready details of the internal price of eggs should Poland again try the dumping of eggs in this country this year?
    Mr. Peart: As my hon. Friend said, and as I have just said, any case raising the question of dumping would be considered on its merits. If there is a case and representations are made, the question will be looked at, but it is really a matter for my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.
    Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the co-operation between himself and his right hon. Friend at the Board of Trade on these matters is such that action can be taken quickly enough to be effective?
    Mr. Peart: I am satisfied that the co-operation is much better than it was under my predecessor.
    Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, at about this time of year, Ayrshire farmers get excited about the possibility of imports from Cyprus, and will he look at this matter?
    Mr. Peart: I was not aware of that, but I shall certainly look at it.

    Long-term Guarantees
    Mr. Peter Walkerasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will seek to amend the Agriculture Act, 1957, with a view to providing longer-term guarantees for British agriculture.
    Mr. Hazellasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will take steps to provide price guarantees over a longer period of time.
    Mr. Peart: I am satisfied that the Agriculture Acts of 1947 and 1957 provide adequate guarantees for the stability of the industry, and I see no need for amending legislation.
    Mr. Walker: Would the right 8hon. Gentleman at least consider looking at the individual commodities to see whether further stability cannot be given to British agriculture by extending some of the three-year guarantees to perhaps five years?
    Mr. Peart: I am always prepared to look at legislation to see whether we can make improvements. As I have said, we are a new Administration; we have a much more progressive outlook and will look forward.
    Mr. Hazell: Does my right hon. Friend intend to introduce any long-term planning for agriculture?
    Mr. Peart: Yes, Sir. The Government are considering forward planning for the country as a whole and agriculture will, naturally, play its part in this planning.
    Mr. Soames: Is it not within the right hon. Gentleman's memory that during the General Election he made much of the fact that he intended to introduce five-year plans for agriculture? How

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    would these fit in with the 1947 and 1957 Acts, which laid down that there shall be an Annual Review?
    Mr. Peart: The principle of long-term planning seeking to put agriculture into the broad expansion of the economy, to give it security and to have this forward look would in no way conflict with the Price Review negotiations or the fundamental concepts of not only the 1957 Act but also the 1947 Act.

    Brucellosis
    Mr. Ian Gilmourasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he is taking to eradicate brucellosis in this country.
    Mr. Kitsonasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will implement the suggestions of the Report on Brucellosis; and if he will make a statement.
    Sir Richard Glynasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what progress is being made with the problem of eradicating brucellosis in cattle; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. Peart: I have nothing to add to the Answer given to the hon. and gallant Member for Knutsford (Sir W. Bromley-Davenport) on 3rd February.
    Mr. Gilmour: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen the proposals of the British Veterinary Association for the stamping out of the disease? Would he not agree that unless he acts soon we are likely shortly to run into difficulties with the export of livestock?
    Mr. Peart: No, Sir. I read the article in question, having had a long interest in the matter. Apart from that, I am discussing the matter and am awaiting a further detailed report by my own departmental officials. It is a very difficult problem—there are questions of expense and resources—but I recognise that there is a problem, and as soon as I have anything to announce I will make a statement.
    Mr. Kitson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the report was published before Christmas? Further, is he aware of the remarks which he made in the debate as far back as June last year,
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    when he said that the Ministry must get on with this? That was probably one of the most sensible things he has said. Is he aware that we are the only country in Western Europe which has no eradication scheme? Will he say that he will get on with it much quicker than by looking at it again?
    Mr. Peart: I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to say that I shall get on with it much quicker than my predecessors did.
    Sir Richard Glyn: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House when his departmental organisation was instructed to look at the matter? Is he not aware that a very full, thorough and authoritative report has been in his hands for a considerable time, and that other countries which are more progressive in this way are seriously considering curtailing our exports and, therefore, our trade, if nothing is done?
    Mr. Peart: From a departmental point of view, I am still awaiting a report on further studies. When I have read and studied it, I will make a decision.
    Mr. Scott-Hopkins: This will not do. The right hon. Gentleman has had the report a considerable time. Does he remember saying in June last year that it was only the administrative will which was stopping the scheme being brought into being? If he is to bring in a scheme, will it be the scheme that he was so anxious in June should be brought in?
    Mr. Peart: I am considering it and shall act with greater speed than my predecessors did.
    Mr. Kitson: Owing to the extremely unsatisfactory reply, I beg to give notice that I will raise the matter on the Adjournment.

    Potato Marketing Board
    Mr. Evelyn Kingasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will in future years arrange with the Potato Marketing Board to give a support price earlier in the year.
    Mr. James Johnsonasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what are his plans regarding future financial aid for the Potato Marketing Board.
    Mr. Peart: The market support arrangements which are operated by the Potato Marketing Board are now being reviewed by the Agricultural Departments, the National Farmers' Unions and the Board. I cannot at this stage anticipate any conclusions that may emerge from this review.
    Mr. King: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the decision announced to the Press yesterday rejecting the advice offered him by the Potato Marketing Board is a grave one? Is he aware that I have in my hand a telegram from the Chairman of the Dorset National Farmers' Union asking me to protest in the strongest terms to the Minister and the House? Is he further aware that if he compels potato growers to sell their produce at a price below what it cost them to grow, and contrary to the advice offered to him, he incurs a very heavy responsibility?
    Mr. Peart: When I met the Board and representatives of the unions concerned, I carefully considered their case and came to the conclusion that there was no need to panic at this stage. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors?"] I am taking my own decision in the light of my responsibilities. I believe that the matter affects not only the producer but also prices to the consumer.
    Mr. James Johnson: Despite the vociferous lobby opposite, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that the needs of the consumers are important? Will he guarantee that there will be adequate, reasonable supplies at fair prices, not forgetting all the time that fish, particularly Hull fish, and chips constitute a basic item in the diet of all classes?
    Mr. Peart: Obviously, we must balance the needs of the consumer and the producer, and that is what we are doing. As I said, we are also reviewing the market support arrangements, and discussions will go on.
    Mr. Soames: The right hon. Gentleman has just said that there is no need to panic at this stage. Is he implying thereby that the request put to him by the Potato Marketing Board to intervene in the market was a panic measure? Of course it was not. Will he tell us the reasons which led him to refuse this perfectly reasonable request so that the Gov-
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    ernment could fulfil their obligations to the potato industry and keep potatoes at a reasonable price?
    Mr. Peart: I said that I would not panic, and I do not propose to do so despite the promptings from the other side of the House. I believe that the decision that I took was the right one, and I am standing by it. Obviously, I shall look at events. In view of the price situation, I felt that there was no need for action of the kind which I am being asked to take by hon. Members opposite.
    Mr. Baxter: Will my right hon. Friena use his good offices to try to get a re-organisation of the Potato Marketing Board, which is very much required from many points of view, not least because of the amount of "bumph" sent out to growers which they are unable to understand because of the phraseology used in the circulars? Cannot the matter be looked at with a view to simplifying the whole set-up and bringing benefits not only to the consumer but to the grower?
    Mr. Peart: As I said, I am looking into the market support arrangements. On the wider question of changes in the Potato Marketing Board, that would be a matter of altering part of the Agriculture Act, 1958, and its implications. I am concentrating now on the support arrangements.
    Mr. Stodart: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the great anxiety that has been expressed as a result of his very recent decision by people who are far away from the markets? I am thinking particularly of people in the north of England. So far as the right hon. Gentleman's responsibilities go, I realise that I cannot step into Scotland. Is he aware that when he quotes average prices, such people are in a very much more difficult position than others? Will he bear this situation in mind?
    Mr. Peart: I will certainly bear it in mind. I am watching the situation very carefully.
    Mr. King: I desire to give notice that, in view of the unsatisfactory nature of the answer, I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.
    Mr. Evelyn Kingasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will seek to confer wider powers on the Potato Marketing Board.
    Mr. Peart: No, Sir. Wider powers could not be conferred on the Board except by an amendment to the Potato Marketing Scheme, and under the Agricultural Marketing Act, 1958, Ministers are not normally empowered to initiate amendments, as this is a function of the Board itself. No draft amendments have been submitted by the Board since those approved in May, 1962.
    Mr. King: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if the advice of the Potato Marketing Board, as now constituted, is to be perpetually rejected, this will be harmful to the potato trade and not helpful? Will he bear in mind, in considering the matter, that the retail price of potatoes in shops bears practically no relation to the price paid to the farmer and that a rise in the price to the farmer does not have a corresponding retail effect, as it does in the case of other products?
    Mr. Peart: I do not perpetually reject the Board's advice. I have rejected it on one occasion. It is my job to do so if necessary.
    Sir H. Legge-Bourke: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the powers of the Board are sufficient to ensure that the taxpayer's position is not prejudiced? As the price of potatoes is now below the guaranteed price, the taxpayer will suffer unless the right hon. Gentleman takes the advice of the Board.
    Mr. Peart: This is one of the matters I have said we will look at. I am having discussions about the future of support arrangements.
    Mr. Snow: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, contrary to a reply he gave to me last week, there is continuing public disquiet about the fraudulent marketing of second-rate potatoes at first-rate prices?
    Mr. Peart: That is another matter, but if my hon. Friend has an example about which he could send me information I will consider it.
    Mr. George Y. Mackie: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the present situation in the north of Scotland illustrates the need for wider powers? Potatoes for seed are being sold there at £3 to £4 below the guaranteed price. The situation calls for wider powers and, indeed, immediate action by the Board.
    Mr. Peart: We are discussing that, as I have said. We will certainly look into whether there is need for wider action by the Board in the case the hon. Member has mentioned.
    Mr. King: On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. Once more, in view of the equally unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I will seek to raise this matter also on the Adjournment and at the earliest opportunity.

    Horticultural Industry (Flowers and Bulbs)
    Sir H. Butcherasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he is taking to assist the section of the horticultural industry engaged in the production of flowers and bulbs.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. James Hoy): Grants and Government-guaranteed credit are available to growers under the Agriculture and Horticulture Act, 1964, to help them re-equip their businesses, and they have also available to them the advice of the National Agricultural Advisory Service and the results of the experiments carried out by the N.A.A.S. at our Experimental Horticulture Stations. I am confident that, if they take full advantage of these varied facilities, they will be able to strengthen their competitive position.
    Sir H. Butcher: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that reply. Is it not the case that the matters to which he has referred were instituted by his predecessors and that, since this Government have been in office, the lot of the flower and bulb growers has been considerably worsened by import duties and other actions?
    Mr. Hoy: Where measures taken by the previous Government were good and we can subscribe to them, we are delighted to do so. It is true that we have had to put up with certain things, but they were the result of the legacy left to us by the last Government.
    Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that these extra costs being borne by the horticultural industry will not be recouped by the Annual Price Review? What are the Government doing

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    to help the industry bear these extremely heavy costs, which are the direct result of Government action?
    Mr. Hoy: I have said that some costs have risen, but I would also point out the increasing efficiency of the horticultural industry. It has been estimated that it has added about 2 per cent. to its gross income. I know the difficulties of the industry, but I am certain that it will be able to overcome them. I have great confidence in the industry's ability to do so.

    Agricultural Production
    Mr. Snowasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what his policy is towards the easing of quantity restrictions for domestic agricultural production in view of the foreseeable increase in world population and food consumption.
    Mr. Peart: The standard quantities will be determined at each Annual Review taking account of the growth of demand and of any changes necessary as a result of reviewing the balance between home production and imports.
    Mr. Snow: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I had hoped that there might be some reference to the requirements of the increasing world population? Are his views in that context in accord with those of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation?
    Mr. Peart: Certainly. This Government, like the last Government, have always been anxious to help F.A.O. and its World Food Programme.
    Sir D. Renton: Can the right hon. Gentleman assure us that his Answer means that British agriculture will have continuous expansion?
    Mr. Peart: Certainly. British agriculture will be able to play its part in an expanding economy. I have repeatedly said that.
    Mr. Wolrige-Gordonasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the policy of the Government towards the potential growth in productivity of the agricultural industry in view of their balance of payment problems and other financial difficulties.
    Mr. Peart: I welcome the industry's excellent record in improving the ratio of output to resources used and I intend to see that the industry has the necessary help and incentives to continue this valuable improvement in its productivity. As regards agriculture's contribution to import saving, I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the replies I gave to the hon. Members for Bromsgrove (Mr. Dance) and Norfolk, South (Mr. J. E. B. Hill) on 3rd February.
    Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, while the record of agricultural productivity in the past has been exceedingly good, production could rise still further? In view of the great saving in imports and the improvement in the balance of payments situation which that would produce, will he ensure that every encouragement is given to farmers to increase production as much as possible?
    Mr. Peart: Certainly. As I have said, the industry has an excellent record in productivity and we are all naturally anxious that production should rise.
    Mr. Soames: In view of the action taken last year under the 1964 Act and through the negotiations and agreements made with overseas countries, would the right hon. Gentleman agree that the industry is now very firmly based to be able to expand to a satisfactory extent without imposing an undue burden on the taxpayer?
    Mr. Peart: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I agree with the main principles of the 1964 Act. I welcomed the desire to phase imports with home production.
    Mr. Biffen: Is the Minister aware that only yesterday the Prime Minister talked about the desirability of increasing imports from the Commonwealth? Can he assure the House that any increase in temperate foodstuffs from the Commonwealth will not be at the expense of the domestic agricultural producer?
    Mr. Peart: Hon. Members must expect a responsible Minister to seek a proper balance.
    Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many farmers are discouraged from increasing production

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    because of increased rents? Why do we get no objection to that from the benches opposite?
    Mr. Peart: I accept what my hon. Friend has said, because on a previous occasion we believe that instructions to the arbitrator under Conservative legislation led to increases in rents.

    Potatoes
    Mr. Snowasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he is aware that there is some anxiety that the total acreage under potato cultivation is too near the theoretical acreage needed for total consumption; and what his policy is likely to be.
    Mr. Peart: The potato acreage is one of the factors to be taken into account at the Annual Review, and I cannot anticipate its outcome.
    Mr. Snow: Is my right hon. Friend happy about the predictability of the potato crop in this country? Is he aware that there is some anxiety that the difference between the permissive acreage and the actual crop is somewhat marginal?
    Mr. Peart: I am aware of this, but, as I have said, we shall be discussing this matter very soon.
    Mr. Soames: If the right hon. Gentleman goes on treating potato growers as he has done in the last week or so, whatever he says about acreage or prices he will not get enough potatoes grown next year.
    Mr. Peart: Since the right hon. Gentleman became a "shadow" he is always speaking nonsense.
    Sir H. Legge-Bourke: In fixing the acreage for the coming season, will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that a variation of even a ton an acre can have a catastrophic effect on the supply of potatoes coming forward? Will he also bear in mind that last season's conditions have resulted in rather more machinery damage than usual and that fewer potatoes of high quality are coming on to the market? Will the right hon. Gentleman bear all this in mind and listen for once to what the Potato Marketing Board has to say?
    Mr. Peart: Certainly I will listen, but that does not mean to say that I have to take everyone's advice.

    Deficiency Grants
    Mr. Ian Gilmourasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will make the payment of deficiency grants to farmers less dependent upon the strict observance of such procedures as that whereby a farmer is prejudiced in receiving his deficiency payments for cereals if his claim does not reach the Ministry before the appropriate closing date.
    Mr. Hoy: As my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary stated in reply to a Question from the hon. Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) on 11th December, he is reviewing the conditions governing acceptance of late claims, to satisfy himself that they are just and reasonable taking account of both the number of applicants whose claims are late and the overwhelming number of applicants who succeed in getting their claims in on time.
    Mr. Gilmour: When the right hon. Gentleman is doing so, will he bear in mind that some farmers have borne grave and unnecessary hardship? Will he also bear in mind that it is unreasonable to expect farmers to have Civil Service minds and see to it that in future these regulations are carried out with greater flexibility and far less bureaucratic pedantry?
    Mr. Hoy: We do our best to meet cases where people quite legitimately make mistakes. I have made a number of them myself. Notices are sent to the farmers, and if they do not return their claims they get another notice before the closing date reminding them that they have not submitted applications. After all, it is the farmers who want to collect the money and we think it reasonable that they might send in applications for it.
    Sir Knox Cunningham: When will the Minister make the deficiency payment to potato growers of the 1960 crop in Ulster?
    Mr. Hoy: If the hon. Gentleman wants to know about that, he had better put down a Question.

    Tractors (Accidents)
    Mr. Peter Millsasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many fatal tractor accidents there were in the South-West in the last year; and how many of the people concerned were under the age of 15 years.
    Mr. Hoy: There were nine fatal tractor accidents in the South-Western Region in 1964. One was to a boy of 12 who was driving a tractor in breach of the Agriculture (Avoidance of Accidents to Children) Regulations, 1958.
    Mr. Mills: Will not the hon. Gentleman agree that this figure is far too high? Will he consider introducing legislation to prevent these tragic accidents? Is he aware that in my constituency there have been two fatal accidents to young boys since October? Will he consider increasing to 15 the age at which a boy can drive these very modern and powerful tractors?
    Mr. Hoy: These cases concern all of us. I remind the House that we employ 400 safety officers to try to prevent this sort of accident and that we have carried out considerable safety programmes by television, leaflets, demonstrations and so on. Of course, we regret these accidents. They are frequently the result of a member of the family being allowed to drive a tractor, and then it is sufficient punishment when anything like this happens.
    Mr. Manuel: Can my hon. Friend say whether there was a prosecution in the case of a boy of 12 driving a tractor?
    Mr. Hoy: This was a tragedy and the people involved have already been sufficiently punished without my making the matter more public. However, if my hon. Friend, or anybody else, is interested£and I can understand the reasons for asking the question£I shall be willing to give him the facts.
    Mr. Peter Millsasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he is satisfied with the publicity campaign to reduce accidents on farms, in particular to reduce tractor accidents; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Hoy: No, Sir, I shall not be satisfied until accidents on farms are sub
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    stantially reduced. A great deal of publicity is aimed at reducing tractor accidents and we shall continue to use all resources available: press, sound broadcasting, television, leaflets, posters, lectures, films, demonstrations and safety exhibits at agricultural shows. We are making strong efforts to increase the effectiveness of the campaign. I shall be pleased to consider any suggestions the hon. Member may care to make.
    Mr. Mills: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that reply. Will he not agree that only legislation will prevent these deaths? Will he not agree to look into the matter again to see whether he should not introduce legislation?
    Mr. Hoy: It is not only a matter of legislation, for the human factor is involved; but we are certainly considering whether we can make other safety regulations to improve the situation.
    Mr. Hazell: Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that the 400 safety inspectors who operate throughout the country have to take this work in their stride with many other duties and that, as a consequence, many thousands of farms have not yet been visited by these safety inspectors?
    Mr. Hoy: The inspectors do a first-class job. We have recently added to their number. They try to get round as many farms as possible, but they are human beings and they can do only as much as the human frame will permit.

    Horses and Ponies (Exports)
    Mr. Kimballasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1) if he is aware of the large number of unbroken ponies and foals now exported under special licence of the Exportation of Horses Order, 1910; and if he will accordingly withdraw the Order;
    (2) if he will take steps to ensure that all ponies and foals exported from this country are protected by the provisions of the Diseases of Animals Act, 1950, and are exported only from registered ports after individual veterinary examination.
    Mr. John Mackie: I am aware that in recent years an increasing number of licences have been granted under the Exportation of Horses Order of 1910.

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    We have the working of this Order under consideration. We are grateful to the hon. Member for his letters and are looking into the figures which he has been good enough to bring to our notice.
    Mr. Kimball: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that, while nobody wants to do anything to impede the genuine export of horses and ponies for breeding, people are genuinely worried about disreputable dealers climbing on to this bandwagon and selling horses and ponies abroad for slaughter? Is he aware that the figures which I have already sent to him and which have been compiled by the Horses and Ponies Protection Association show that the f.o.b. price for an unregistered horse is now equal to the killing price for meat on the Continent, which is the factor where the concern lies?
    Mr. Mackie: I appreciate the figures which the hon. Gentleman has given to me, but at the same time, apart from our powers to require inspection in the 1950 Act, we have no powers to prevent the slaughter of these animals once exported. It is only this Order which allows the animals to escape inspection when they are destined for slaughter. We are considering the position.

    Agricultural Credits
    Mr. Hawkinsasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he intends to set up an agricultural credit organisation which will have special responsibilities for providing farmers with medium-term credit at reasonable rates of interest.
    Mr. Peart: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave on 3rd February to the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. George Y. Mackie).
    Mr. Hawkins: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the statement in my Question was part of a speech given by the then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party at Swaffham, Norfolk, in July 1963, and later reprinted in a booklet called "British Farms—New Security"—and that many small farmers are anxiously awaiting the introduction of this credit organisation so that they can take up grants under the horticulture and other schemes?
    Mr. Peart: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has carefully read our statements. As I said to the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland, I am carefully looking into this question and, when we come to a decision, we shall announce it.
    Mr. Soames: Was this not looked into very carefully when the right hon. Gentleman made the pledge? What does he mean by "reasonable rates of interest"?
    Mr. Peart: I made the pledge in principle. It was inevitable that when we assumed power the legislation required to carry out some of these principles would have to be carefully looked into. Apart from that, we have to consult the interests concerned.
    Mr. George Y. Mackie: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a tendency to believe that he should do more and review less?
    Mr. Peart: The hon. Gentleman will accept the principle that before we make final decisions on very important matters we should consult the farming interests.

    Small Farmers
    Mr. Hawkinsasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is his Department's estimate of the number of small farmers who earn less than an agricultural worker's wage.
    Mr. Peart: There is no official estimate as regards full-time small farmers. As regards other small farmers, about 175,000 agricultural holdings in England and Wales, or one-half of the total, are estimated to provide only part-time employment for the occupiers. Most of these occupiers are likely to earn less than a farm worker's wage from their holdings but the majority have other jobs or sources of incomes.
    Mr. Hawkins: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that on 16th December, in answer to a Written Question of mine about one of his advisers, Mr. Emrys Jones, he said that in answer to a question at Colchester, Mr. Emrys Jones had said that there were 60,000 small farmers who fell into this category? If he agrees with his official, can he say when he will raise the standard of the incomes of small farmers to farm workers' wages, plus the interest on the capital invested in their farms?
    Mr. Peart: The position of the small farmer will also be carefully considered at the Annual Price Review.
    Mr. Rankin: If a large landowner developed only a small corner of his estate for farming, would he be regarded as a small farmer?
    Mr. J. E. B. Hillasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will institute a comprehensive survey of the position of small farmers to find out, having regard to local physical conditions, what correlation there may be between size of business and the age of the occupier, length of occupation, agricultural training and experience, amount of capital available, off-farm earnings, use of advisory and other official facilities and grants, use of credit and any co-operative services available, and any other relevant factors.
    Mr. John Mackie: Various surveys carried out in the last few years have yielded a good deal of information on the position of the small farmer. I shall keep in mind the desirability of improving our knowledge, but I do not think that the additional information to be gained from a comprehensive survey would justify the very large effort and cost it would entail.
    Mr. Hill: Is it really so involved? It is the hard core of the problem which is really complicated, and that relates to those full-time small farmers whose scale of business is not large enough to give a satisfactory income. Such a survey, I believe, has been carried out in America with very good results.
    Mr. Mackie: Yes, I would agree with the hon. Gentleman but there is a tremendous amount of information already available, if he wants it and will read it carefully. Surveys of that description have to be accurate, and they are obtained at considerable cost. However, as he knows, there are various surveys which have been carried out by some colleges and universities and others, and which are very interesting, such as "The Small Farmers Scheme", in Devon; "The Nuffield Farm Project"; "Farmers who earn less than£10 a week", by Professor Britton and Gwyn E. Jones; "The Economic position and prospects of some small
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    farms in Wales". We have all these to go on, and I really think that at the present moment we have sufficient information.
    Mr. Prior: If the hon. Gentleman thinks he has sufficient information, will he make certain he uses that information to good effect?
    Mr. Mackie: Yes.

    Charolais Cattle
    Mr. Charles Morrisonasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he will make his decision on the importation of Charolais cattle.
    Mr. Peart: I have called for a further progress report on the cross-breeding trials with Charolais bulls. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and I are seeking the comments of the industry on the information available with a view to reaching a decision within the next few weeks.
    Mr. Morrison: I appreciate that there are numerous views to be taken into consideration before a decision is made, but will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind, in particular, that if an affirmative decision is made there will in all probability be a time lag before importation can take place because suitable unvaccinated stock may not be available?
    Mr. Peart: I will bear that in mind.
    Mr. Soames: We are delighted to hear from the right hon. Gentleman that he actually intends to take a decision within the next three weeks.
    Mr. Bossom: If these cattle are imported into this country, will the Minister bear in mind what happened the last time that cattle came here? There was a case of leptospirosis while they were in quarantine. Surely this sort of thing has a very bad effect on our export market. Secondly, can the right hon. Gentleman say anything about the trials? Are they complete? We have not yet seen the report on the second part of the trials.
    Mr. Peart: I understand that the trials have been completed. I am waiting for an examination of the reports on the trials.
    Mr. Snow: Is my right hon. Friend distinguishing between importations from France and importations from, say, Canada?
    Mr. Peart: That is a matter which will be looked into.

    Beef
    Mr. Charles Morrisonasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what reduction he expects there will be in the scarcity of beef.
    Mr. Peart: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave on 3rd February to the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. WolrigeGordon).
    Mr. Morrison: Is the right hon. Gentleman expecting an increase in the price of milk? Secondly, will he do his utmost to ensure that his advisory officers use every means available to advise farmers on the best ways to cut down on the very considerable proportion of calves which die before they are reared or which are unsuitable cross-breeds for beef rearing?
    Mr. Peart: The whole question of increased home supplies is very important. We are—[Interruption.] As hon. Members know, the Annual Review starts today. They would not like me to go beyond that.
    Mr. Manuel: Could my right hon. Friend say how many matters in his Department need decision and the introduction of legislation? Would he say whether he considers this a direct reflection on the sloth and laxity of the previous Administration?
    Mr. Speaker: That is a little wide of the Question, which is about the scarcity of beef.
    Mr. Deedes:In the course of the Review, will the Minister reconsider his refusal to consider carrying out trials in respect of the Sussex cattle?
    Mr. Peart: That does not arise from the Question.

    Channel Islands Milk
    Mr. Martenasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he will announce his decision about the price of Channel Islands milk.
    Mr. Hoy: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Bessell) and others on 3rd February last.
    Mr. Marten: Can the hon. Gentleman say why his right hon. Friend turned down the recommendations of the Thorold Committee? Unless the House is told the real reasons, it will have to draw the conclusion that this was done purely for party doctrinaire reasons.
    Mr. Hoy: The hon. Gentleman can draw what conclusions he likes, but if he draws that one he will be quite wrong. My right hon. Friend had to weigh up the circumstances. He had been asked to make a considerable increase in the price of this particular milk. Having looked at the figures, he decided to make an increase which he thought would be fair to the producer and, at the same time, fair to the consumer, who is not unimportant.
    Mr. Soames: Would the hon. Gentleman say what were the factors which led his right hon. Friend to decide against freeing the price of quality milk?
    Mr. Hoy: I think that I have answered that. Channel Islands milk represents about 7 or 8 per cent. of the total sales of liquid milk. It is not unimportant.
    Mr. J. E. B. Hill: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that any premium earned by Channel Islands milk comes from the market demand for it? Is it fair to the consumer to restrict the price and, hence, the production of a luxury article for which there is an increasing demand?
    Mr. Hoy: It is not a question of seeking to restrict it, because it does even better—[Interruption.] I have already told the right hon. Gentleman Channel Islands milk is not an unimportant part of the liquid milk available to consumers in this country. I am bound to point out once more that it is already enjoying l½d. a pint more than ordinary milk. Because of the quantity available, and by making an increase in price which was not insubstantial, we thought that we were being fair to the consumer and to the producer.

    Food Prices
    Mr. Priorasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what results have been achieved by his discussions over rising food prices.
    Mr. Peart: In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin) on 20th January, I described the general nature of these discussions, saying that I had expressed the Government's point of view and had received assurances from the various trade associations that they would recommend their members to hold down prices and absorb cost increases to the greatest possible extent. I trust and have every confidence that these assurances will be honoured.
    Mr. Prior: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell his economic overlord the First Secretary that a large part of the increases in food prices has been brought about by his Government's own policy? Will he make it plain that the agricultural industry and the food processing industry have put up prices only because they were forced to do so as a result of the economic measures imposed by the Government?
    Mr. Peart: The discussions which I have had with the trade interests confirm that the Government's actions, which we had to take, have in no way affected prices in the way suggested.
    Mr. Park: Is my right hon. Friend aware that when the Conservative Party was in power food prices rose by over 50 per cent. without any effective action being taken? Is he further aware that any action which he takes along the lines he is suggesting will be received with great satisfaction by the people of this country?
    Mr. Peart: Certainly. My right hon. Friend the First Secretary is anxious to set up machinery to deal with specific cases.

    Arsanilic Acid
    Sir Richard Glynasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he proposes to include arsanilic acid in the Veterinary Safety Precautions Scheme; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. John Mackie: The question of clearance of this substance under the Veterinary Products Safety Precautions Scheme is still under consideration.
    Sir Richard Glyn: Will the hon. Gentleman suggest to his right hon.
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    Friend that this matter is of sufficient importance to be taken out of the unfortunate position of being enclosed with so many other hundreds of measures being looked at or which are under consideration? Those concerned with this important matter would feel happier if we were told that it was put under the blotting paper or was at least in such a position that it might be acted on more quickly?
    Mr. Mackie: As the hon. Gentleman knows very well, poisons and additives in food are a very important matter which cannot hastily be judged. The Advisory Committee which deals with this matter takes very great care to ensure that the matter is dealt with properly. Any hasty action would be to the detriment of the consumer. As the hon. Gentleman knows, accidents with drugs have happened.

    Flood Defences, Market Harborough
    Mr. Farrasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what progress is being made in the improvement of flood defences in Market Harborough.
    Mr. Hoy: The Welland River Board has put forward proposals for the protection of Market Harborough from flooding. These present certain problems which require further consideration by engineers.
    Mr. Farr: During the Minister's four months or so in office, has his attention been drawn to the fact that Market Harborough has been flooded more frequently in recent years than any other town in the country? Will he try to put a bit of urgency into these plans, and particularly the overflow plan which is now in preparation?
    Mr. Hoy: I am grateful to the hon. Member for absolving me from the blame for the years that have gone. I realise the seriousness of the matter and I know that there are certain engineering difficulties which it will take some little time to overcome. I certainly assure the hon. Member, however, that we will do all that is humanly possible to expedite a decision in the matter.

    Meat Supplies
    Mr. Farrasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what long-term steps he is taking to ensure adequate supplies of beef at reasonable prices in the shops.
    Mr. Benceasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what steps he is taking to increase the supply of meat from home sources.
    Mr. Peart: Future policy on home production, which provides over 70 per cent. of our total consumption, is a matter for the Annual Review which I cannot anticipate. As regards imports, there is a current shortage on the world market due to a reduction in available supplies and the increase in demand.
    Mr. Farr: While thanking the Minister for that Answer, may I ask whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that the Argentine now supplies most of its meat to Common Market countries and, furthermore, that the chairman of the veal producers in this country has forecast that for the next five years there will be a shortage of beef? In view of these two facts, may I ask the Minister whether, in the forthcoming Price Review, he will give a real incentive to traditional British beef producers to make good the threatened shortage?
    Mr. Peart: I recognise the facts that have been mentioned but, obviously, I cannot comment now on Annual Review matters.
    Mr. Bence: In considering what encouragement to give to British farmers, and particularly Scottish farmers, to produce more meat, will my right hon. Friend at the same time encourage his right hon. Friends to discourage the practice which was encouraged under the previous Administration of exporting some of the best of our beef to the Continent of Europe?
    Mr. Peart: One has to keep this matter in the right perspective. If exports got out of hand, they might well then be a matter for decision and action.
    Mr. Jopling: Is the Minister aware that there is one way in which he can quite quickly improve the supply of home-produced beef, and that is by
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    extending the calf subsidy to Friesian heifer calves, and that it is time that this long out-of-date anomaly was ended?
    Mr. Peart: As the hon. Member knows, this is a matter which will be considered.

    Increased Petrol Duty (Costs)
    Mr. Gowerasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what estimate he has now made of the increased annual costs to the farming industry in England and Wales, respectively, due to the increase of 6d. per gallon on petrol and diesel oil.
    Mr. John Mackie: Separate figures for England and Wales are not available, but the estimated increase in cost in England and Wales together is about £2 million in a full year.
    Mr. Gower: Does the Minister agree that this might be described as one of several elements which have led to increased costs in food production?
    Mr. Mackie: Yes, it is a certain element, but not a very large one.
    Mr. Ridley: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the First Secretary wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer complaining about the price increase?
    Mr. Mackie: No.

    Agricultural Holdings, Wales
    Mr. Gowerasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many agricultural holdings there were in Wales at the latest convenient date; and how this compares with the number five years earlier.
    Mr. John Mackie: In June, 1964, there were 49,444 holdings in Wales with more than an acre of land used for agriculture; in June, 1959 the comparable figure was 52,970. Two-thirds of the decrease of 3,526 occurred in holdings of under 20 acres, including part-time and spare-time holdings.
    Mr. Gower: In how many cases have the reductions in the number of holdings resulted from amalgamation?
    Mr. Mackie: We cannot give the actual figure, but a considerable number were due to amalgamation.

    Protection of Animals (Anaesthetics) Act, 1964
    Mr. W. Baxterasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will give favourable consideration to extending the period of one week for the rubber-ringed castration of lambs under the Protection of Animals (Anaesthetics) Act, 1964.
    Mr. John Mackie: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave to a Question by the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) on 3rd February.
    Mr. Baxter: I am aware of the reply that was given to the hon. Member for South Angus, but I wonder whether my hon. Friend will further consider this matter. I am not a member of an official organistion to make representations to him, but on behalf of my constituents and as a reasonable Member of Parliament I am now making representations that this question be gone into. I do so for the simple reason that many sheep farmers in Scotland are greatly concerned at this one-week period of lamb castration and they find that when they are bringing in their lambs for the purpose of castration, it does much more harm to the unborn lambs in the sheep that are being brought in than the saving of pain to the lambs which are castrated throughout the week. I would wish my hon. Friend to give further consideration to this matter at the earliest opportunity.
    Mr. Mackie: My hon. Friend can take it that the Government always considers the opinions of minorities, however small they may be. He must, however, appreciate that we have to look into this matter through the representations given to the British Veterinary Association, whose advice we must take and with whom, I know, there has been consultation by representative bodies in Scotland. I do not know whether the representations have been strong enough when the advice reaches the Association's headquarters, which is the source from which we get it before acting upon it.
    Mr. Stodart: Is the Joint Parliamentary Secretary aware of the report in one of the farming newspapers at the weekend of the views expressed by Dr. John Watt, secretary of the Scottish branch of the British Veterinary Association and also lecturer in veterinary science at the East of Scotland School of Agriculture, which appeared to lean rather heavily towards the views expressed by the farming community in this matter? Will the hon. Gentleman consider this?
    Mr. Mackie: It will certainly be taken into consideration.
    Mr. Baxter: May I remind my hon. Friend that there is a great deal to be said from the point of view of a practical man, especially a practical farmer?
    Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie: Will the Minister bear in mind the urgency of this matter, because in three months' time this process will be due to be carried out again? The matter is important not only for this reason, but also because people who have tended sheep all their lives are convinced that this is by far the best method to use?
    Mr. Mackie: I note what the hon. Member has said.

BILL PRESENTED
  LOST PROPERTY (SCOTLAND)
  Bill to extend the application of section 412 of the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act 1892 to landward areas of counties in Scotland and to provide for the sale or disposal of lost and unclaimed perishable articles, presented by Mr. Archie Manuel; supported by Mr. Thomas Steele, Mr. Arthur Woodburn, Sir John Gilmour, Miss Harvie Anderson, Mr. James Hill, Mr. Peter Doig, Mr. John Brewis, Mr. Malcolm MacMillan, Mr. John Robertson, Mr. Forbes Hendry, and Mr. Emrys Hughes; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday 5th March and to be printed.

  PROTECTION OF DEER
  3.32 p.m.
  Mr. Marcus Lipton: I beg to move,
  That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit the hunting with hounds of deer and the killing or capturing of deer with snares; to provide for the control of deer by approved methods; and for purposes connected therewith.
  Widespread and growing public opinion is coming to the conclusion that stag hunting with hounds is an abomination. It is not without significance that during the last 60 years the number of deer hunting packs has fallen from 19 to five at the present time. If my Bill were brought in and passed then the last five remaining packs would have to pack up. More modern methods of deer control are now being operated. In this respect, the Government are setting a very good example, and have done so for some years past. During the last three years, for instance, on estates owned by the Forestry Commission, about 21,000 deer were shot. In these circumstances I refuse to believe that the remaining five packs of staghounds make a worth-while contribution to the problem of deer control.
  I said a moment ago that public opinion, in growing measure, was opposed to stag hunting. A recent opinion poll, conducted under independent auspices at the request of the League Against Cruel Sports, showed that 77 per cent. of the population were opposed to stag hunting. I am happy to say that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is prepared to support the Bill I am now seeking leave to bring in. According to a recent Press report, the joint master of the Devon and Somerset Hounds has said that deer have to be controlled. There I agree with him, but when he goes on to say
  "hunting is the most humane way of doing it"
  I most emphatically disagree. If hunting is the most humane way of doing it, why do not these staghunt masters conduct a raging propaganda campaign against the Forestry Commission in this connection?
  It is true that the Deer Act, 1963, contains some useful features, but there are still too many loopholes. It is still legal to chase a deer for hours till it collapses
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  through sheer exhaustion, or is driven into the sea to drown. It is still legal to drag the cornered deer into the open and slaughter it even in the middle of the street, with young children standing around. It is still legal to observe the bestial ritual of cutting out the deer's heart, liver and kidneys and to give the pieces to the nearest stander-by, to hack off the hooves and to present them to the hunters as charming souvenirs of what stag hunters would no doubt describe as "a bloody good day".
  It is still part of the rules of this filthy game to "blood" newcomers, smearing the blood of the dead animal on the cheeks of young children. England is now one of the few countries in Europe yet to tolerate stag hunting in its present form.
  I have had some letters of encouragement too numerous to acknowledge and from farmers and other residents in areas where staghunts still function. Most of the writers ask that their names should not be published for fear of reprisals and victimisation. Let me quote from one of these letters which I received only this morning. It is from a vicarage in Somerset. The vicar writes as follows:
  "May I, from the heart of the hunt country, say how fervently my wife and I wish good success to the Bill you are about to present? I am not able to press my views as militantly as I long to do. Even so, I am certain that the vast majority of the people regard this so-called sport with utter loathing. Indeed, although this particular parish is almost given over to hunting I have been told that if a secret vote were taken in a parish not far from here 90 per cent. of the people would be found to be against it."
  That is only one of many letters I have received.
  In my submission, the time has come to end stag hunting once and for all. This country prides itself on its reputation for sportsmanship and fair play, and yet this reputation can continue to be besmirched by this barbarous survival. I ask the House to accept the Motion.
  3.37 p.m.
  Mr. Jeremy Thorpe: I rise to oppose the Motion—[HoN. MEMBERS: "Shame."] If the same freedom which the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) wishes to accord to the stag is accorded to those who differ from his point of view, no doubt I shall be able to make known my reasons for opposing the Motion.

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  In the first place, I do not hunt, and I never have; nor, I suspect, does the hon. Member. In the second place, I share with him the wish that the most humane methods shall at all times be used and that cruelty should be minimised. Unlike him, having no personal knowledge of this hunting, I must turn to the most objective and most well-informed and the most experienced information which one can find, and that, I would suggest, is from the Royal Commission which reported to the then Labour Government in 1949, the Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Mr. Scott Henderson.
  It may be thought that, because of his discoveries in another connection, some doubt may be cast upon his views, [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] All I can say is that if that was the view of hon. Members opposite it was not shared by Lord Chuter-Ede, the Home Secretary of the day. But I am not here to paper over the cracks in the party opposite.
  I think that it is generally agreed that the number of stags—and I think that the hon. Member conceded it—has to be kept down, because if they proliferate damage is done to crops, particularly root crops and corn. Also, considerable damage is done to trees, especially young trees, by stags which rub off on them the fur, the velvet, of their antlers.
  The Scott Henderson Report concluded that the range of a rifle was anything up to 3,000 yards, and that at that range there was a great danger that even if a shot were to succeed in hitting the stag it would wound and not kill, and that the only guarantee of painlessly killing stags with a rifle shot was to get within a range of 15 to 20 yards. Anybody who knows the speed with which stags can move, the woodland conditions in which they are found, and, speaking about Exmoor, the misty conditions which obtain, realises that it is virtually impossible to achieve that with any measure of certainty.
  If any more humane method than hunting could be found, I would support it without any shadow of doubt at all. Snaring is a far more cruel method of
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  destruction—and this is now illegal under the 1963 Act—but the alternative method, that of shooting, carries with it a far greater risk of inflicting calculated cruelty and injury to an animal which is maimed and not killed. This, I believe, is something which nobody in this House would wish to see as an effect of the Bill.
  I merely refer to two short quotations from the Scott Henderson Report. Paragraph 207 says:
  "We have made careful inquiries about some deer drives and are satisfied that there has been much indiscriminate shooting by those taking part in them. The evidence we have had makes us question the belief of some of the animal welfare organisations that deer are likely to be controlled without undue suffering if they are driven and shot. Our view is that the shooting of deer with shotguns must inevitably be accompanied by a great deal of suffering."
  In paragraph 230 the conclusion is drawn that although hunting does involve an element of suffering, it is the least cruel way of keeping the numbers down.
  It may be that hon. Members who, like myself, have no practical experience of hunting would prefer to remain seated upon their prejudices. Speaking for myself, I would prefer to rely on the Report to which I have just referred. I believe that the effect of the Bill would not only not reduce cruelty to stags, but would go a long way towards increasing it.
  Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of Public Business) and agreed to.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Marcus Lipton, Mr. Boston, Mr. Craddock, Mr. Dodds, Mr. Foot, Mr. Monslow, Mr. Newens, Mrs. Short, Mr. Solomons, Mr. Spriggs, Dr. Summer-skill, and Mr. Victor Yates.

  PROTECTION OF DEER
  Bill to prohibit the hunting with hounds of deer and the killing or capturing of deer with snares; to provide for the control of deer by approved methods; and for purposes connected therewith, presented accordingly and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday 19th February and to be printed.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
  MINISTERIAL SALARIES AND MEMBERS' PENSIONS BILL
  As amended, considered.
  MINISTERIAL SALARIES AND MEMBERS' PENSIONS BILL

    Clause 1.—(REVISED RATES OF SALARIES FOR MINISTERS.)
    3.45 p.m.
    Mr. A. R. Wise: I beg to move, in page 1, line 12, to leave out subsection (2).
    Mr. Speaker: I suggest that it might be convenient to consider, at the same time, the following Amendments: In Schedule 1, page 15, line 26, after "State", insert "when in the Cabinet".
    In Schedule 1, page 15, line 31, at the end insert:
    Minister of State not in the Cabinet … 5,625
    Mr. Wise: The Chief Secretary rebuked me heavily once for trying to hint that the main purport of a large number of the Clauses of the Bill was to reduce the House roughly to the position of the Reichstag, but I am unrepentant. I think that we are witnessing a tendency for so increasing the power of the Prime Minister, and, therefore, the power of the Executive, that we go back to Fox's famous Motion, carried in this House by acclamation:
    "The Power of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished".
    We should take a serious look at the Clauses of the Bill, even at this rather late stage.
    What we are proposing is to empower the Prime Minister to vary, up or down, with a limit on the top, because he can vary down and then up again if he wishes, the salary of a Minister of State. Hitherto, it has been possible for a Prime Minister who falls out with one of his Ministers of State to request his resignation. Indeed, there was an occasion during the life of the last Parliament when this was done on a fairly extensive scale. It gave satisfaction all round, particularly to hon. Gentlemen opposite.
    What we are doing here is giving a power which did not exist then, and it will be particularly difficult for the party opposite to use this disciplinary power of requesting resignations because they now have so many people in office that
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    they cannot dismiss anybody because they cannot replace him. We are, therefore, removing this wholesome form of discipline which the Executive had before.
    The Government can now introduce a system of punishment by purse. I do not think that this would be desirable. I do not think that if the Prime Minister wakes up one day with a slight "touch of liver", he should be able to look at the first Minister of State who comes in to see him, and say, "You are not worth £8,000 a year. From now on it will be £6,000 for you, and if I 'have a liver' again next week it will probably be down to £5,000". This is an extra-ordinary power to give to any one man over persons who, in theory at least, are his equals.
    Let us not lose sight of that fact. A back bencher is the equal of the Prime Minister in this House. He has the same rights as the Prime Minister. A back bencher yields priority to right hon. Members in the right to be heard slightly more often, a priority which I would not suggest they abuse, but this goes to a further and deeper interference with the traditions and customs of the House, because included in the subsection which we are proposing to delete there are a large number of offices, such as the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Paymaster-General. These offices are a great deal older than the office of Prime Minister. They are based on tradition, and, in my view, they should not be subject to the whim of whoever is leading a majority in the House of Commons.
    Once upon a time they were officers of the Crown. In theory, of course, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster still is one. He draws his salary for his valuable administrative services in running the Duchy of Lancaster. It should not be for the Prime Minister, at any moment, to say that the Duchy of Lancaster has so diminished in value, or has been so badly run, that the person holding the office ought to have a reduction in salary.
    This is a form of minor punishment which I regard as wholly undesirable, and I trust that we shall be able to persuade the Government to think again on this point. It will not affect the Government very much in their effort to

    385
    increase the proper remuneration of Ministers of the Crown. Indeed, I do not doubt that we shall be assured that the Prime Minister will never do such a thing as arbitrarily to reduce the salary of a Minister of State, or the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, or the Paymaster-General—and especially not the Paymaster-General.
    But if he does not intend to do this, why bother to give him the power? Let these unfortunate men at least know that so long as they hold their offices they can reckon on the same cheque being paid to them, month by month, as the life of Parliament goes on. They will not enjoy it for long; we might as well let them have the best of it while the going is good.
    I am reminded that I should have inquired what salaries the present Ministers of State are getting in the Lords and Commons. It is suggested that this is pure class legislation—one law for the nobility and another for the squires and knights. I believe that the squires and knights are rather better off on the deal. I shall be interested to hear the hon. Member refresh our memories as to the salaries that are paid.
    Mr. Donald Chapman: The genial if not facetious way in which the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise) introduced the Amendment made it clear that we are not intended to take it seriously. I will deal with it seriously for two minutes, however, in case any hon. Member is misguided or foolish enough to believe that the hon. Member was serious. The simple answer to the hon. Member's argument, as he well knows, is that this subsection retains the right of the Prime Minister to exercise some flexibility in the use of various Ministries and in the duties put upon various Ministers.
    Subsection (2,b) speaks not merely about the great offices of the Crown, as such; it speaks of the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and so on, when they are not members of the Cabinet. In that sense it reserves the right of the Prime Minister to pick special duties for them if he so wishes, thereby affording him some flexibility if he wishes to use those offices for
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    people outside the Cabinet. The remuneration fixed by the Prime Minister in those circumstances would vary according to the duties he attached to the offices, especially as the holders of those offices were outside the Cabinet.
    Subsection (2,a) reserves flexibility to the Prime Minister in the case of Ministers of State and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. We know that the office of Chief Secretary to the Treasury is a fairly new creation in governmental jobs, and that the future salary will surely depend from time to time upon the duties attached to that new job, which is now only in a period of development, and in a future Government might not need to be as powerful as it is now. That is why the Prime Minister should reserve to himself the right to some flexibility in attaching less important duties and less power to the job, and to pay a correspondingly lower salary.
    The hon. Member is dressing up with heavy words what is meant to be merely a leg-pull against the present Administration. It will not wash. His argument carries no conviction, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury will resist the Amendment and expose it for the piece of nonsense that it is.
    The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Diamond): My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) put his finger on the heart of the matter when he referred to the flexibility which is rightly provided here to fit the salary to the responsibility rather than to fit it to the title irrespective of the responsibility carried by the holder of the office for the time being.
    The hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise) was a little inflexible in his approach. His arguments were not wholly dissimilar to those that I have heard on a previous occasion. He asked me to regard the Amendment with sympathy. I shall regard part of it with considerable sympathy. One of the things that he proposes is that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury should receive an increase in salary. I propose to give very careful and sympathetic thought to that point.
    Apart from that, and being quite serious about the matter, I hope that I can satisfy the House that on the

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    material point no new pattern of flexibility is being introduced. Broadly, we are carrying on in exactly the same way as hitherto. Perhaps the simplest way of demonstrating this is to give an account of the offices and the salaries attached to them.
    The real complaint of the hon. Member for Rugby is that there is unnecessary flexibility in the arrangements proposed, which the Amendment seeks to remove. On the contrary, in terms of maximum salary it is we who are introducing inflexibility by imposing a maximum salary in respect of Ministers of State. In the previous Administration there was no maximum. It was open to the then Prime Minister to appoint Ministers of State at salaries that he regarded as appropriate. Apparently there was no ceiling; the Prime Minister could have appointed them at any salary. In fact, he appointed them at salaries related to the responsibilities attached to their offices.
    Some were appointed at the equivalent of £5,000 a year, some at £4,500 and some at £3,750. I hope that the hon. Member does not want me to give the exact titles. Broadly, there were three grades.
    Sir Martin Redmayne: Will the hon. Member give the numbers and the distribution?
    Mr. Diamond: Ministers without Portfolio rank as Ministers of State. Two Ministers without Portfolio were appointed by the previous Administration. Ministers without Portfolio carried salaries of full departmental Ministers, namely, £5,000. There were two such Ministers appointed at salaries of £5,000 a year each. There were five Ministers of State—two in the Department of Education and Science, one for the Royal Navy, one for the Army and one for the Royal Air Force—at salaries of £4,500 a year, which is intermediate between the salary of a full departmental Minister and that of a Parliamentary Secretary.
    Then there were nine at a salary of £3,750 which is the salary of other Ministers of State—two at the Board of Trade, two Commonwealth Relations and the Colonies, two for foreign affairs, one
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    Home Office, one Scottish Office and one Welsh Affairs. I think that I made a case that there were 16 Ministers of State appointed by the immediately preceding Administration. They were appointed at salaries relevant to their responsibilities. The flexibility then was greater than it is now. There was no ceiling. They could have been appointed at £10,000 or £20,000. This did not happen because it is not the practice of Prime Ministers, I must tell the hon. Member for Rugby, to behave with the kind of senseless irresponsibility which he described in his speech. They do not behave in that way, and they are not likely to behave in that way, so long as we have a democratic Parliament to assist them in their considerations.
    4.0 p.m.
    The other point which I should like to make, because I do not know whether the House is fully aware of it, is that the office of Minister of State and the flexibility attaching to his salary is not an invention of ours. When the Conservatives came into office, there were two Ministers of State, and when the Conservatives left office there were 16. They increased the number from two to 16. In the Administration immediately preceding the present one, the present Leader of the Opposition, as Prime Minister, increased the number from eight to 16. He doubled it. We are increasing it, effectively, from 16 to 18.
    I say "effectively" because I do not want to mislead the House. There are in fact 19, but the 19th is the Economic Secretary, who, in effect, came into this category before. He is still carrying on the work of Economic Secretary, but is now known as Minister of State, Department of Economic Affairs. The proper and honest comparison is that, in the previous Administration, the number rose from two to 16, in our Administration from 16 to 18; in the previous Administration there was no responsible upper limit for salary, in our Administration there is a responsible upper limit; in the previous Administration there were three bands of salary, in our Administration there are the same three bands. Broadly, it is the same pattern.
    I am, therefore, bound to say that the Bill which provides for this, and which the hon. Member for Rugby seeks to

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    amend, should stand. I cannot see my way to advise the House to accept the Amendment.
    Sir David Renton: Would the hon. Gentleman now kindly answer my hon. Friend's question and give the salaries which Ministers of State in the present Government are receiving, or will receive, as a result of the Bill?
    Mr. Diamond: I hope that the House does not think that I am delaying it unduly. I shall be delighted to give any information asked for. Under the present Administration there are two Ministers without Portfolio, as there were in the last Administration, who receive the £5,000 rate.
    Perhaps it would be simplest if I quote the current rates, making it perfectly clear that the £5,000 goes up to £8,500 under the proposal which is being accepted by the House. For £5,000 read £8,500. For £4,500 read £7,625 as from 1st April next and for £3,750 read £5,625 as from 1st April next. However, I should be right, and I hope quite clear, if I continue to quote current rates.
    The current rates are two Ministers without Portfolio at £5,000 and one, the Deputy Secretary of State for Defence and Minister of Defence for the Army, at £5,000. This, I think, is wholly proper, because, as a result of the amalgamation of the three services, overriding responsibility has been given to the Secretary of State for Defence and his number two, to put it shortly, has much the same responsibility as a full departmental Minister. Therefore, it is right that he should receive an appropriate salary.
    There are three Ministers of State receiving a salary of £4,500 a year, the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy, the Minister of Defence for the Royal Air Force and the Minister of State, Department of Economic Affairs, and the Chief Secretary makes four. But if one excludes the Minister of State for Economic Affairs, because he is paralleled by the Economic Secretary, who was not previously classified as a Minister of State, one gets the exact comparison. There are 12 Ministers of State receiving £3,750, which is the other level of salary for Ministers of State—one at the Department of Education and Science, two for foreign affairs, plus two at the Foreign Office, one Commonwealth Relations, one
    390
    Home Office, one Scottish Office, three at the Board of Trade and one at the Welsh Office.
    Sir D. Renton: I am very much obliged to the Chief Secretary for giving this information without notice. We greatly appreciate that. I cannot accept, however, the argument which he has put forward. I can see that the Bill gives less flexibility than has existed over Ministers of State in the past, but we are now reaching conclusions upon this matter and a settlement which, we hope, will last for a good many years. It is the first time since 1830 that Parliament has attempted to do this in a comprehensive way. I suggest that we should do it thoroughly and properly in the way best suited to modern circumstances and taking advantage of the lessons of the past.
    There was a time prior to 1780 when, although we had great Prime Ministers, they governed and they mastered Parliament and their own parties with the aid of political patronage. Although great things were achieved in those times, we have passed a long way from those times and we do not want to see any vestige of them return. Granted that, in respect of Ministers of State but not otherwise—as I understand the position—there has been tremendous flexibility over the last 30 years, we should make sure that there is not unnecessary flexibility, to use the Chief Secretary's own words, when arriving at a settlement which will last for many years to come.
    What has happened during the last 30 years? After all, when two Ministers without Portfolio were introduced before the war on an experimental basis, this matter did not loom so large. Then, during the war, Sir Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister, found it convenient to have a number of Ministers of State, some of them to fulfil duties which could only arise in time of war and, obviously, great flexibility was needed then for that purpose. I think that it is wrong to quote the circumstances which arose then and which have been built upon since as a justification for what we find in Clause 1 of the Bill.
    As I understand, what my hon. Friends are aiming at in putting down this Amendment is to ensure that, so far as Ministers of State and the Chief Secretary and the great officers of State are concerned, there shall be no unnecessary

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    flexibility. There will still be some flexibility. The Prime Minister will still be able to pay the full £8,500 a year to a Minister of State who is in the Cabinet, but if a Minister of State is not in the Cabinet he should receive the lesser sum referred to in the latter Amendment, which is £5,250. Surely that is the right way to do this.
    I wish to ask a question which, I think, is most material to our discussion. I have no doubt that the Chief Secretary will be given leave to speak again. We are entitled to know whether there was any power in the past to vary salaries downwards while a particular Member of this House, or of another place, still held the appointment. As I understand, that could be done under the Bill and I do not think that it is a desirable situation.
    Mr. Chapman: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman believe that if, for example, one of the sinecure offices is used for quite a different purpose with a great diminution in the power of the office the holder should, nevertheless, be paid the same high salary all the time?
    Sir D. Renton: I should have thought that there would be a better way of meeting such a situation—perhaps by asking the Minister concerned to resign altogether or to take part in a general reshuffle of the Government—than for him to be faced with a power held in the hands of the Prime Minister, granted by Parliament and contained in an Act of Parliament, for his salary to be reduced.
    Mr. Chapman: With respect, I am not talking of individuals having their salaries reduced. I am talking of an office which loses some power in a new formation of Government. If the Lord Privy Seal's Office is to be used for great Cabinet work in one Government and for something different in another there is no reason why the office should carry the same salary.
    Sir D. Renton: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman and I are in dispute, though we may be at cross purposes. I am saying that it has been considered broadly right for Parliament to know what powers a Prime Minister is to use when choosing his Government and filling the various posts in it, and, also, that Parliament should have the right to say
    392
    what salaries should be paid; fixed salaries, not maximum salaries reduceable at will. As I understand, apart from the flexibility with regard to Ministers of State in the past, Ministers have—at any rate, since 1830, if not before—been paid a fixed salary which Parliament has approved.
    To the extent that that principle is departed from in Clause 1 and particularly in subsection (2) of that Clause, I say that it is wrong; that it restores to an extent—not to the alarming extent that some hon. Members may think but it could be the thin edge of the wedge—the power of patronage to the Prime Minister. I hope that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman), whose interventions we always enjoy in any debate, will not get a wrong impression about my hon. Friends and myself, or, indeed, any hon. Member on this side of the House and accuse us of "leg-pulling". We are not "leg-pulling." This is an important constitutional matter on which Parliament should have its say.
    Hon. Members opposite do not quite see themselves as others see them. We do see them, we realise the extremely discordant elements that any Labour Prime Minister has to support him in trying to govern. I think it very important that when a Labour Government are introducing a Bill of this kind the powers in the Bill should not appear to be capable of use merely for the purpose of making it easier for a Labour Prime Minister to govern by making deals of one kind or another with those various discordant elements.
    After all, we have had three members of the Cabinet who, whether they have rescinded from their principles or not, were keen members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament before being invited to join the Government. I do not think it right for the hon. Member for Northfield to accuse us of "leg-pulling" when we are faced with a situation of that kind.
    4.15 p.m.
    Sir Robert Cary: I wish to support what has been said by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton). Our resentment springs from the growth of patronage in the hands of

    393
    the Prime Minister. The Chief Secretary said that this may well fix things for all time. We hope that it will remain so. The hon. Gentleman said that one would not anticipate that a Prime Minister would act with gross irresponsibility. We are not suggesting that the present Prime Minister would act in any such way, but our legislation should be tied up in such a way that no one would have the opportunity to act with gross irresponsibility.
    A few days ago you, Mr. Speaker, on another occasion, warned the House to be mindful of its reputation outside. That was in respect of a particular aspect of the debate. I think that there is a collective responsibility on the House of Commons to be mindful of its reputation in all forms. I cannot see that the patronage now going into the hands of the Prime Minister can be for the best interests of Parliament.
    An appointment to office is not a trading operation invested in one man as might have been the case in the days of Sir Robert Walpole. We have long since left those days. I hope that there will be some acknowledgment by the Chief Secretary that there is substance in what we have said about this subsection. When one considers the whole string of Ministers to be seen and dealt with, and appointed to office, it is apparent that this is not a matter of the personal relationship between the Prime Minister and individuals. It is not a trading operation in the terms of the salaries paid.
    I should prefer to see salaries paid to the office and never to the individual. My right hon. and learned Friend said that variations cannot occur if responsibility in a Department lessens. That is not the reason for the Prime Minister to be provided with an excuse to reduce the salaries of individual Ministers. Even at this late hour I think that the Chief Secretary ought to acknowledge that there is substance in what we are saying.
    There are elements growing up in the country which resent Parliament as such. There is trash called "Corridors of Power" lying about on the bookstalls. Some individuals would like to divorce themselves entirely from the franchise which we observe in this House and, by patronage and other means, avoid their direct responsibility. Some architects of this new thinking would welcome
    394
    it if those at the centre did, after all, know best. I think that that should be modified and I regret that some of them have found their way into the ranks of this Government.
    Sir M. Redmayne: I join with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) in his reproof to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman), who thought that this Amendment represented a "leg-pull". I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would agree that this is a serious point—I beg the Chief Secretary's pardon, he is not a right hon. Gentleman. He ought to be by virtue of his office. He cannot exercise the power for which the office was originally set up unless he has that rank.
    The idea that it may be a "leg-pull" possibly derives from the fact that the previous stages of the Bill were taken on Fridays. The Second Reading, a perfectly good one, was on a Friday and the Committee stage was on another Friday, but a most significant one, for it followed the severe defeat of the Government in two by-elections. Possibly, therefore, some points were not pressed as heavily as they should have been.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise) put the case in a cogent way and I find it strange how much more sweetly his voice struck my ears today than it has done on some occasions in the past. To summarise the arguments adduced by my hon. Friends, we object to the complete discretion—and it is complete, and no one can deny that; up or down within a certain maximum—which is given to the Prime Minister in fixing the salaries of Ministers of State, of the Chief Secretary and even more to this flexibility in respect of four famous old sinecure offices if the holders are not in the Cabinet.
    There is here a deliberate attempt to downgrade these sinecures, each of which has a great part in history and has been held by a number of famous men. The hon. Member for Northfield spoke about an office losing power. In so far as these great offices of State have power—and we admit that they are sinecures—their power cannot be

    395
    varied. If, therefore, one is to give them to men who exercise less power, one is certainly downgrading them in an historical sense.
    Mr. Chapman: With respect, considering the office of the Duchy of Lancaster, I would say that when it was held in the last Administration—by the Chairman of the Conservative Party—it had a lot less governmental power and duty than it has under the present Administration.
    Sir M. Redmayne: The hon. Gentleman underrates the power of the Chairman of the Conservative Party. The fact remains that these sinecure offices have always had their place in the Cabinet and have served to provide for a Prime Minister in his Cabinet a number of those all-rounders who are essential to good government.
    Without wishing to make a political point, it is only fair to say that in the present Government the only people who had any knowledge of Cabinet before they took office were the Prime Minister, the then Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Wales, who, though I respect him, cannot be regarded as being a cogent force at this time. Now that the Government are robbed of the services of their first Foreign Secretary, it is true to say that the Prime Minister is very short of men with experience of how the Cabinet machine works.
    By putting in the Bill a Clause by which, at some future time, all these useful offices of State could be downgraded, the Prime Minister does no service to the general interests of good government in this country. In the present Government there remain in the Cabinet the Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal, as well as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Paymaster-General is out. He is not in the Cabinet and it is proper that we should ask—I do not believe that this question has been asked so far—what salary is being paid to the Paymaster-General and for what services to the Government. We are not clear what rdôle he plays today, although some of us have been clear of the rôle, in another capacity, he played in the past.
    Much more important is that if, in fact, there is power in the Bill to downgrade
    396
    the Lord President of the Council, that is a blow to the constitutional structure. The Lord President of the Council is an office of no small importance. It is an office which, by the nature of it, is in close contact with the monarchy, and must remain so. Admittedly, it is slightly formalised in its duties, but, as I see it, it is part of the structure of constitutional government which we value and which, I believe, no action of any Government should be allowed to undermine by quietly putting through, in a Bill of this sort, a power by which, at some future date, that office may be lowered in status. Although this point has not been taken to that extent during the passage of the Bill, it is one which should be taken closely into account by the Government.
    It is clear that the Bill gives complete freedom to the Prime Minister to pay Ministers of State at whatever rate he pleases. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire said that he could decrease the salary of these Ministers. Equally, up to the limit of £8,500, he can increase it. I am not saying—because one does not wish to say this kind of thing—that there would be the kind of jobbery in which salaries were used as an inducement for loyalty or support of the Government. None the less, in the Bill that power is being injected and at some future date, if not in the term of this Government, that power might be used.
    The Chief Secretary pleads that this flexibility is desirable and that there is a precedent for it. In saying that, he is rather stretching the truth. In the Bill there is complete flexibility within the maximum limit. I agree that there was not a maximum limit before, but, equally, the limit was accepted and would never have been exceeded. He went on to say that there were three levels of payment: first, that a Minister of State in the Cabinet received the salary which was due to a Cabinet Minister, and then, at the lower end of the three, there was the salary paid to a Minister of State who was not in the Cabinet, while between there was an intermediate rate of £4,500, and he said that five Ministers of State received that. I question that. I think that the number should have been four.
    Following the reorganisation of the Defence Department the three heads of

    397
    the Services received that rate and the other one, the Minister of Education, who was in the Cabinet, made up the fourth. I do not think that there was a fifth. I see that the Chief Secretary, in that friendly way of his, is telling me that there were two, but the senior Minister of Education received a full Cabinet Minister's salary. I am almost certain that that was the case, but it is not a great point.
    I believe that, on the whole, this third rate was a mistake, but I remind the House of the circumstances in which it arose. When the Bill for reorganising the Defence Departments was introduced there was in it the suggestion that because there would be a Defence Minister in complete control of defence, and since there had to be under him three heads of the Services, there should be a differentiation in their salaries. I thought then, as I think now, that it was a mistake.
    This comes back to the point of the hon. Member for Northfield—who, I gather from his absence, has become bored with my argument. The responsibilities of the heads of those Services remained the same, although there was a Minister put above them. It would have been a very much better policy had they received the same salary as any head of a Department, whether or not he is in the Cabinet. That disposes of that variation.
    4.30 p.m.
    There was the other variation by which the salary paid to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle), when he was
    a joint Minister of Education, in the Cabinet, was reduced. I do not think that these distinctions are necessary, and I am sure that if one is considering the salaries of Ministers in and out of the Cabinet it is much better that there should be clearly distinct rates for them.
    Even admitting, as I have admitted, my view that in these particular respects mistakes were made, I believe that this Government, whose members are so much students of modernisation and method in industry, commerce and government, and who brought in the Machinery of Government Bill, with which we are all too familiar—and then had to admit that it was not quite a Machinery of Government Bill, but might be called something else—would have been wiser if they had not sought to give the Prime Minister these wide powers, but had come down firmly in favour of paying Ministers a salary related precisely to their jobs; those in the Cabinet, or heads of Departments, getting one rate, then what one might call the second tier of Ministers—although I do not altogether agree with the theory of tiers—getting another rate, and those in the third tier getting a third rate.
    This subsection, which increases the flexibility, is wholly subject to our disapproval, and I would ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to support the Amendment in the Lobby.
    Question put, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Bill:—
    The House divided: Ayes 247, Noes 200.

    Division No. 57.]

    AYES

    [4.32 p.m.

    Abse, Leo

    Boston, T. G.

    Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

    Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

    Bowden, Rt. Hn. H. W. (Leics S. W.)

    Crawshaw, Richard

    Alldritt, W. H.

    Boyden, James

    Crossman, Rt. Hn. R. H. S.

    Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

    Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

    Cullen, Mrs. Alice

    Armstrong, Ernest

    Bray, Dr. Jeremy

    Dalyell, Tam

    Atkinson, Norman

    Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

    Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

    Bacon, Miss Alice

    Brown, Hugh D. (Glasgow, Provan)

    Davies, Harold (Leek)

    Bagier, Gordon A. T.

    Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & Fbury)

    Davies, Ifor (Gower)

    Barnett, Joel

    Buchan, Norman (Renfrewshire, W.)

    Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

    Baxter, William

    Buchanan, Richard

    Delargy, Hugh

    Beaney, Alan

    Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

    Dell, Edmund

    Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.

    Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

    Diamond, John

    Bence, Cyril

    Carter-Jones, Lewis

    Dodds, Norman

    Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood

    Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara

    Doig, Peter

    Bennett, J. (Glasgow, Bridgeton)

    Chapman, Donald

    Donnelly, Desmond

    Bessell, Peter

    Coleman, Donald

    Driberg, Tom

    Blackburn, F.

    Conlan, Bernard

    Duffy, A. E. P.

    Blenkinsop, Arthur

    Corbet, Mrs. Freda

    Dunn, James A.

    Boardman, H.

    Cousins, Rt. Hn. Frank

    Dunnett, Jack

    Edelman, Maurice

    Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter & Chatham)

    Probert, Arthur

    Edwards, Rt. Hn. Ness (Caerphilly)

    Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)

    Pursey, Cmdr. Harry

    Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

    Leadbitter, Ted

    Randall, Harry

    English, Michael

    Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

    Rankin, John

    Ensor, David

    Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)

    Redhead, Edward

    Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)

    Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)

    Rees, Merlyn

    Evans, loan (Birmingham, Yardley)

    Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

    Reynolds, G. W.

    Fernyhough, E.

    Lipton, Marcus

    Rhodes, Geoffrey

    Finch, Harold (Bedwellty)

    Lomas, Kenneth

    Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

    Fitch, Alan (Wigan)

    Loughlin, Charles

    Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

    Fletcher, Sir Eric (Islington, E.)

    Lubbock, Eric

    Robertson, John (Paisley)

    Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

    McBride, Neil

    Robinson, Rt. Hn. K. (St.Pancras, N.)

    Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)

    McCann, J.

    Rose, Paul B.

    Floud, Bernard

    MacColl, James

    Ross, Rt. Hn. William

    Foley, Maurice

    MacDermot, Niall

    Rowland, Christopher

    Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)

    McGuire, Michael

    Sheldon, Robert

    Ford Ben

    Mclnnes, James

    Shinwell, Rt. Hn. E.

    Freeson, Reginald

    McKay, Mrs. Margaret

    Shore, Peter (Stepney)

    Garrett, W. E.

    Mackenzie, Alasdair (Ross & Crom'ty)

    Short, Rt. Hn. E. (N'c'tle-on-Tyne,C.)

    Garrow, A.

    Mackie, George Y. (C'ness & S'land)

    Short, Mrs. Renée (W-hampton, N. E.)

    George, Lady Megan Lloyd

    Mackie, John (Enfield, E.)

    Silkin, John (Deptford)

    Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

    MacMillan, Malcolm

    Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

    Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

    MacPherson, Malcolm

    Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)

    Griffiths, Will (M'chester Exchange)

    Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

    Slater, Joseph (Sedgefield)

    Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.

    Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

    Small, William

    Hale, Leslie

    Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

    Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

    Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

    Mallalieu, J. P. W.(Huddersfield,E.)

    Snow, Julian

    Hamilton, William (West Fife)

    Manuel, Archie

    Solomons, Henry

    Hamling, William (Woolwich, W.)

    Mapp, Charles

    Soskice, Rt. Hn. Sir Frank

    Hannan, William

    Mason, Roy

    Spriggs, Leslie

    Harper, Joseph

    Maxwell, Robert

    Steele, Thomas

    Hart, Mrs. Judith

    Mellish, Robert

    Stonehouse, John

    Hattersley, Roy

    Mendelson, J. J.

    Stones, William

    Hayman, F. H.

    Millan, Bruce

    Summerskill, Dr. Shirley

    Hazell, Bert

    Miller, Dr. M. S.

    Swain, Thomas

    Heffer, Eric S.

    Milne, Edward (Blyth)

    Symonds, J. B.

    Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret

    Molloy, William

    Taverne, Dick

    Hill, J. (Midlothian)

    Monslow, Walter

    Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

    Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)

    Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

    Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)

    Holman, Percy

    Morris, Charles (Openshaw)

    Thomas, lorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

    Horner, John

    Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick (SheffieldPk)

    Thornton, Ernest

    Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)

    Murray, Albert

    Tinn, James

    Howarth, Robert L. (Bolton, E.)

    Neal, Harold

    Tuck, Raphael

    Howie, W.

    Newens, Stan

    Urwin, T. W.

    Hoy, James

    Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)

    Varley, Eric G.

    Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

    Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip (Derby,S.)

    Wainwright, Edwin

    Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

    Ogden, Eric

    Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

    Hunter, Adam (Dunfermline)

    O'Malley, Brian

    Wallace, George

    Hunter, A. E. (Feltham)

    Oram, Albert E. (E. Ham S.)

    Warbey, William

    Hynd, H. (Accrington)

    Orbach, Maurice

    Watkins, Tudor

    Hynd, John (Attercliffe)

    Orme, Stanley

    Whitlock, William

    Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

    Oswald, Thomas

    Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)

    Irving, Sydney (Dartford)

    Owen, Will

    Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)

    Janner, Sir Barnett

    Padley, Walter

    Williams, W. T. (Warrington)

    Jeger, George (Goole)

    Page, Derek (King's Lynn)

    Willis, George (Edinburgh, E.)

    Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

    Paget, R. T.

    Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

    Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)

    Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles

    Winterbottom, R. E.

    Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)

    Park, Trevor (Derbyshire, S.E.)

    Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.

    Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

    Pavitt, Laurence

    Woof, Robert

    Jones, Dan (Burnley)

    Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)

    Yates, Victor (Ladywood)

    Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

    Pentland, Norman

    Zilliacus, K.

    Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)

    Perry, Ernest G.

    Kelley, Richard

    Popplewell, Ernest

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Kenyon, Clifford

    Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)

    Mr.Lawson and Mr Grey.

    NOES

    Agnew, Commander Sir Peter

    Braine, Bernard

    Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)

    Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

    Brinton, Sir Tatton

    Cooper, A. E.

    Anstruther-Gray, Rt. Hn. Sir W.

    Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter

    Corfield, F. V.

    Astor, John

    Brooke, Rt. Hn. Henry

    Costain, A. P.

    Baker, W. H. K.

    Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

    Courtney, Cdr. Anthony

    Batsford, Brian

    Bruce-Gardyne, J.

    Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)

    Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton

    Buchanan-Smith, Alick

    Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. Sir Oliver

    Bell, Ronald

    Buck, Antony

    Cunningham, Sir Knox

    Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)

    Bullus, Sir Eric

    Curran, Charles

    Berkeley, Humphry

    Buxton, R. C.

    Dance, James

    Berry, Hn. Anthony

    Campbell, Gordon

    Davies, Dr. Wyndham (Perry Barr)

    Biffen, John

    Carlisle, Mark

    Dean, Paul

    Biggs-Davison, John

    Cary, Sir Robert

    Digby, Simon Wingfield

    Black, Sir Cyril

    Channon, H. P. G.

    Dodds-Parker Douglas

    Blaker, Peter

    Chataway, Christopher

    Eden, Sir John

    Bossom, Hn. Clive

    Chichester-Clark, R.

    Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

    Box, Donald

    Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)

    Elliott, R. W.(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.)

    400

    401

    Errington, Sir Eric

    Kitson, Timothy

    St. John-Stevas, Norman

    Farr, John

    Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

    Scott-Hopkins, James

    Fell, Anthony

    Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

    Sharples, Richard

    Fletcher-Cooke, Charles (Darwen)

    Litchfield, Capt. John

    Sinclair, Sir George

    Fletcher-Cooke, Sir John (S'pton)

    Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfield)

    Spearman, Sir Alexander

    Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)

    Llyod, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)

    Speir, Sir Rupert

    Gammans, Lady

    Longbottom, Charles

    Stanley, Hn. Richard

    Gibson-Watt, David

    Longden, Gilbert

    Stodart, J. A.

    Giles, Rear-Admiral Morgan

    Loveys, Walter H.

    Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm

    Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, Central)

    Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

    Studholme, Sir Henry

    Glover, Sir Douglas

    McAdden, Sir Stephen

    Summers, Sir Spencer

    Glyn, Sir Richard

    MacArthur, Ian

    Talbot, John E.

    Goodhew, Victor

    Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

    Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

    Gower, Raymond

    McMaster, Stanley

    Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow, Cathcart)

    Grant, Anthony

    McNair-Wilson, Patrick

    Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)

    Grant-Ferris, R.

    Maginnis, John E.

    Teeling, Sir William

    Grieve, Percy

    Mathew, Robert

    Temple, John M.

    Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)

    Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.

    Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

    Griffiths, Peter (Smethwick)

    Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.

    Thomas, Sir Leslie (Canterbury)

    Gurden, Harold

    Meyer, Sir Anthony

    Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Conway)

    Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

    Mills, Peter (Torrington)

    Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)

    Hamilton, M. (Salisbury)

    Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)

    Thorneycroft, Rt. Hn. Peter

    Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N. W.)

    Mitchell, David

    Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)

    Harris, Reader (Heston)

    Monro, Hector

    Tilney, John (Wavertree)

    Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

    More, Jasper

    Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

    Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Maccles'd)

    Morgan, W. G.

    Tweedsmuir, Lady

    Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)

    Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

    van Straubenzee, W. R.

    Harvie Anderson, Miss

    Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

    Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John

    Hastings, Stephen

    Murton, Oscar

    Vickers, Dame Joan

    Hawkins, Paul

    Nicholls, Sir Harmar

    Walder, David (High Peak)

    Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel

    Noble, Rt. Hon. Michael

    Walker, Peter (Worcester)

    Hendry, Forbes

    Nugent, Rt. Hn. Sir Richard

    Wall, Patrick

    Higgins, Terence L.

    Onslow, Cranley

    Walters, Dennis

    Hiley, Joseph

    Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

    Ward, Dame Irene

    Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)

    Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian

    Weatherill, Bernard

    Hirst, Geoffrey

    Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)

    Webster, David

    Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin

    Page, John (Harrow, W.)

    Wells, John (Maidstone)

    Hopkins, Alan

    Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)

    Whitelaw, William

    Hordern, Peter

    Peel, John

    Williams, Sir Rolf Dudley (Exeter)

    Hornby, Richard

    Pickthorn, Rt. Hn. Sir Kenneth

    Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

    Hunt, John (Bromley)

    Pitt, Dame Edith

    Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

    Hutchison, Michael Clark

    Pounder, Rafton

    Wise, A. R.

    Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

    Prior, J. M. L.

    Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

    Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)

    Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James

    Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher

    Jennings, J. C.

    Redmayne, Rt. Hn. Sir Martin

    Wylie, N. R.

    Johnson Smith, G.

    Renton, Ht. Hn. Sir David

    Yates, William (The Wrekin)

    Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)

    Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

    Younger, Hn. George

    Kerr, Sir Hamilton (Cambridge)

    Ridsdale, Julian

    Kershaw, Anthony

    Roofs, William

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Kimball, Marcus

    Royle, Anthony

    Mr. McLaren and Mr. Pym.

    King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

    Russell, Sir Ronald

    Clause 7.—(PENSIONS OF MEMBERS.)
    4.45 p.m.
    Sir D. Renton: I beg to move, in page 5, line 35, to leave out subsection (4).
    I must "come clean" straight away and tell the House that this is a drafting point, but it is a very important drafting point. Potentially, it affects every one of us and governs the amount of pension that we would receive on reaching 65, provided that we had retired from Parliament.
    I find subsection (4), in relation to the Clause as a whole, a bit of a brain teaser. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) drew attention to what appeared to be a difficulty in the drafting when the Chief Secretary moved an Amendment to the earlier part of the Clause in Committee. Since then the Chief Secretary has writ-
    to my right hon. and learned Friend and kindly sent me a copy of the letter. The hon. Gentleman says in his letter that, having taken advice, he is satisfied that the words have the effect intended, namely, that payment of the pension should be suspended for a period which is to include both periods of membership of the House of Commons and periods of candidature.
    I wish I thought that that were really so. Having studied the matter very carefully, I find great difficulties about it. The best way of getting the mind of the Chief Secretary on to the point will be for me to ask him some specific questions about the effect of the subsection. As he might find it very valuable to have to assist him the fresh mind of the Minister of Technology, who is sitting beside him, may I say how very kind we think it is of the Minister of Technology to pay such close

    403
    attention to our proceedings, when we realise how very heavily pressed he is with the affairs of his Department, which are so vital to the future of the country.
    The first point I want to get clear is this. Am I right in thinking that, for the purpose of calculating reckonable service, the period when any of us are candidates for election between Parliaments and the time between the dissolution of a Parliament and adoption as a candidate or nomination as a candidate is reckonable service, provided that we are re-elected but not otherwise? The subsection seems to read like that, but I should like an assurance, especially in view of what the hon. Gentleman says in his letter.
    The example of an hon. Friend of mine might well illustrate the difficulty I have in mind over the calculation of a period of service before 16th April, 1964. My hon. Friend first became a Member in 1950. He resigned his seat in 1957. He was out of Parliament from 1957 to 1963, when he was reelected at a by-election. What he would like to know—I think that we would all like to know—is whether the time that he spent as a candidate at that by-election is to be counted as reckonable service. The matter is obscure at the moment.
    Then there is the position of those who are over 65 and who decide, having given up parliamentary life, that they cannot live without it and seek re-election once more. They may well have drawn a pension during the time they were out of Parliament. I concede that it is clear from the Clause that, when they return to Parliament, the time that they spend as Members of Parliament and as candidates, presumably after having been re-elected, is reckonable service for the purpose of getting an even larger pension if they ever retire again. What we need to know is whether their candidature, on the occasion when they first sought re-election after retirement after 65, is also reckonable service.
    On a matter purely of wording, I should have thought that many difficulties could be overcome if a drafting suggestion which I am about to make were accepted. I am sorry that I have not tabled a specific Amendment to cover the point, because I must confess that it occurred to me only last night when
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    I was thinking about this matter all over again. It was then too late to table even a starred Amendment, because the House had risen.
    I ask hon. Members to turn to page 5, lines 36 and 37. I suggest that a great deal of difficulty would be overcome if the words towards the end of line 36
    "not be payable in respect of"
    were replaced by the words
    "be suspended during".
    That is my suggestion. Although this is a money Bill and there are limits to what can be done to it in another place, this is the sort of drafting Amendment which is allowed there provided that the question of privilege is properly attended to.
    Even if the Chief Secretary cannot say now that the Amendment I propose would be a solution to some of the difficulties which I have mentioned, perhaps a less equivocal wording than that which appears in lines 35 to 37 would be possible, and he might be able to have the matter adjusted in another place.
    Mr. Wise: At the risk of being described, once again, as frivolous, I wish to draw attention to a point in this rather involved subsection which, I think, constitutes a serious injustice. The subsection provides that a pensioned ex-Member who becomes a Member of the House again loses his pension. I agree that this circumstance is most unlikely to arise. After a man has reached the age of 65, it would, unquestionably, be a rare occasion for him to offer himself once more for election, and get in. But it has happened on a fair number of occasions.
    The provision to which I have referred seems unjust. A pension is something given as a result of past service. A Service pension is the same. A soldier coming into the House after retirement does not lose his pension. A civil servant coming into the House after retirement does not lose his Civil Service pension. I cannot see why a Member of Parliament should be subjected to this treatment. Why should he not keep his pension, which has come to him as a result of long service and which, I trust, he will have fully earned?
    I hope that the Chief Secretary will realise that this provision may well perpetrate an injustice against Members of

    405
    the House of Commons as compared with other pensioned persons who draw their pensions from the Exchequer.
    Mr. Diamond: To answer first the point raised by the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise), it is against normal practice and wholly against the recommendations of the Lawrence Committee, on which we are basing all our provisions, that one should both receive a salary for doing a job and receive a pension for having retired from that job. The comparison which the hon. Gentleman introduced is not valid. It is not a question of a civil servant losing his Civil Service pension when he comes into the House. The true comparison is with a civil servant not receiving his Civil Service pension when he resumes work as a civil servant, which is quite a different matter and a fairly regular occurrence.
    I think that I take the House with me when I say that it is against normal practice and wholly against the recommendation, which we have largely accepted, that someone should both receive his pension for having retired from a job and receive his salary for not having retired from it. It would be too incongruous for words. So we rest on the normal basis that an hon. Member, having retired, is entitled to his pension.
    I take next the substance of the point raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. Renton). I shall deal with the draftsmanship point last. I submit that we are making a sensible provision here. This is not a situation in which we can talk about retirement in the ordinary way, as one can in an ordinary job. If a person employed in an office leaves that office on reaching retirement age, it is perfectly clear that he has retired and does not seek to go back. The House of Commons, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman made clear, is a very attractive place. Even with the hon. Member for Rugby here, it is still a very attractive place, and one misses it a great deal, as I know from first-hand experience, when one is temporarily, shall I say, resting.
    Sir Douglas Glover: We shall do our best to give the Chief Secretary some more experience of that.
    Mr. Diamond: I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not thinking of referring to the little exchange we had on an earlier occasion about the comfort or lack of comfort when sitting on the benches opposite. I gather that he is much more relaxed now and more comfortable. As the years pass, he will find it even more comfortable.
    Dealing with the substance of the Amendment, it must be right to take only one real criterion of what retirement means in the case of a Member of Parliament, and this is why the word "retirement" is not used in the Bill. The only criterion is when a Member himself says, "I have retired. I have had enough", for one reason or another.
    The right hon. and learned Gentleman has raised the unlikely possibility that someone being entitled to pension, that is, being over 65 years of age and having done 10 years of hard work—we know what hard work it is in this place—having definitely said that he has had enough, he is retiring and will not seek re-election, thereafter, at the age of 70, perhaps, changes his mind. He seeks re-election and gets nominated. This is not an everyday event, to put it mildly.
    Sir R. Cary: It happened during the war, by nomination.
    Mr. Diamond: I repeat that it is not, perhaps, an everyday event.
    As I was saying, the man gets nominated. There follows then the period between nomination and the election—I am postulating now that he fails to be re-elected—when he has shown, by accepting nomination and doing all the hard work involved in his campaign for re-election, that he has ceased to be retired, or ceased to be of a mind to retire. For those two or three weeks, he will not draw the pension which he might otherwise have drawn because he has sought re-election. I do not think that it can be said that this constitutes a real hardship, or that it represents such a likely event that one should make special provision for it.
    The other circumstance is much more usual. We have a Dissolution. Hon. Members go off, seek re-election, and the vast majority are re-elected. It would be absurd, in those circumstances, if the pension should begin to be paid to everyone entitled to it because the majority

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    will be re-elected in the normal, or fairly normal, course of events. I put it to the House that we are right as we stand.
    As regards the draftsmanship, the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire will appreciate that all of us, apart from the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, are in a difficulty. One takes the best possible legal advice available. One does not attempt to act on one's own advice in these matters. I recognise that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has doubts about the draftsmanship of the subsection and about whether it fulfils its purpose. I am grateful to him. On a previous occasion, he expressed doubts about another Clause. We accept that those doubts were wisely expressed and, later, we shall propose an Amendment to meet them, This is a most valuable exchange of views, and we are very grateful to any right hon. and learned Gentleman who is able to help us by expressing doubts about the draftsmanship.
    This question was raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd), in Committee, and we had the opportunity to consider it, with all the advice available to us. I have written to both right hon. and learned Gentlemen explaining what the situation is and the test by which lawyers normally see whether the draftsmanship is capable of standing up. We are advised that it is absolutely right as it is.
    None the less, the right hon. and learned Gentleman has asked me to look at the matter again and consider an alternative form of words. There would be an opportunity, even at a later stage, if that form of words were thought to be more clear, to suggest an Amendment in another place. Of course I will look at it, but I have gone to considerable trouble about it and have written to the two right hon. and learned Gentlemen to explain it, and I hope that, in the circumstances, the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not press the Amendment unduly.
    Sir D. Renton: In view of the undertaking given by the Chief Secretary, for which I am grateful, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

    Clause 8.—(PENSIONS FOR WIDOWS.)
    5.0 p.m.
    Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: I beg to move, in page 6, line 32, to leave out from "remarriage" to the end of line 36.
    This is an Amendment to one of the other Clauses dealing with the pension scheme. I want to make clear in moving it that I remain a strong supporter of the idea of a pension scheme. I urged it upon the Lawrence Committee, subject to the proviso that it should be of modest proportions, and I think that the scheme in the Bill is of modest proportions. Also, the increments diminish as the years go on; after 15 years, they become £24 a year, which I do not think can be considered a very large sum. In view of the frugal and respectable proportions of the scheme, I do not want the fact of my moving the Amendment to be taken as meaning that I am in any way seeking to withdraw my support for it.
    We all know the reasons for the scheme. We have had colleagues who have stayed here longer than they wanted to because the alternative was the Members' Fund. Incidentally, I still think that there is an important rôle for the Members' Fund for those who have not done the qualifying period of service for the pension scheme and those who have but have not reached the age to benefit from it. I hope that the Fund will be able to deal with these cases on much more generous lines than has been possible so far.
    It is very important that in accepting a pension scheme of this sort we should not seek to make precedents for ourselves or follow other precedents which are not generally applied. Clause 8(3) says:
    "in the case of remarriage the Trustees may, if they think fit, at any time direct that the pension be restored if satisfied that the subsequent marriage has been terminated or that there are exceptional reasons for the payment of the pension notwithstanding the subsistence of that marriage."
    I do not know any precedents for a provision of that sort, but there may be some. However, I have had my attention drawn to the Army Pensions Warrant, which states in paragraph 222 that the widow's pension shall cease on her remarriage but if she again becomes a widow her pension may be restored in whole or in part provided her pecuniary circumstances are in the opinion of the

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    Army Council sufficient to justify the restoration. I find nothing there to suggest that a pension should be payable during the continuance of a subsequent marriage.
    We must be careful about this. This is not something which my ingenuity has detected. It is a matter upon which representations had been made. It has been noticed outside the House that we are in our own pension scheme setting up more generous terms than those which exist in other pension schemes. That is undesirable
    Attention has also been drawn to the fact that in this Clause we are giving half the husband's pension to the widow compared with the one-third which is the Service rate. Also, we are providng for the fact that even if a Member marries after he has ceased to be a Member, the widow can benefit. I am told that this is contrary to the position in the case of the Armed Forces, where, in the case of marriage after retirement, there is no question of the widow benefiting.
    I trust that the Chief Secretary will look at these points. I do not mention them in the spirit of wishing to detract from what I think are the proper benefits of a pension scheme, but we of all people have to be scrupulously fair to ensure that we are not setting up for ourselves a pension scheme which is more generous than schemes for other departments of the public service.
    We ought to do one of two things—either fashion ours in accordance with other schemes, or, if we are to give ourselves more generous terms, we should say at once that we will apply the same terms as quickly as we can to other people in the public service in similar pension schemes.
    Sir D. Renton: I support my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd). We must be very careful what we do. I think particularly of the analogy of police officers. I remember moving an Amendment some years ago when we had the Police Pensions Bill before the House. The then Home Secretary was Mr. Chuter Ede, now Lord Chuter-Ede. The effect of my Amendment would have been that if a police officer married after his retirement his widow would get the pension. That seemed to me at the time to be perfectly reasonable and sensible.
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    However, the Amendment was resisted by the Home Secretary, and my recollection is that he said in a somewhat jocular way that that would make retired policemen very attractive as potential husbands. I do not think that this concession has ever been made since. I am sure that we would not wish to make ourselves, whether we happened to be bachelors or widowers, unusually attractive, more so than others in the public service, as potential husbands.
    Mr. Diamond: I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will forgive me for saying that in the circumstances of the case, were he a bachelor, he could not fail to make a most attractive husband.
    Sir D. Renton: I think we could also gain some guidance in this matter by looking outside the sphere of the statute law to what among those who are fortunate enough to have property to dispose of in even a modest marriage settlement has been the practice for centuries and still is.
    When a marriage settlement is made there is a widow's portion provided for in one of the Clauses, but my recollection is that that Clause always contains what is known among lawyers as the dum sola provision. In other words, the widow gets the widow's portion only so long as she remains single. Once she ceases to remain single she is cut off from it for ever, for if she becomes a widow again she does not return to the benefit of the widow's portion in her original marriage settlement.
    That is a practice which has been approved by custom over many years. In this Clause we are enacting something which is at variance with that practice. So we find that the behaviour of successive Governments and the behaviour of the property-owning classes, who are not altogether to be despised in their habits, argues against what is in the Clause and in favour of my right hon. and learned Friend's Amendment. So, especially as most hon. Members potentially, though it would be in somewhat sad circumstances, have an interest in the Clause, for the reasons given at the outset I hope that we shall be very careful about what we are doing.
    Mr. F. J. Bellenger: I am in some sympathy with the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr.

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    Selwyn Lloyd), particularly in his illustration of the Royal Warrant for Service pensioners. But the remedy for that anomaly surely is not to deprive the widows of former M.P.s, as apparently the Amendment would do, but to improve the pension rights under the Royal Warrant. I am a trustee of the Members' Fund and I am sure that all right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House want to be as generous as we possibly can.
    Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: Perhaps it will save argument if I say at once that if I receive an undertaking from the Government that they will deal with the anomaly in the way suggested by the right hon. Member I will withdraw the Amendment.
    Mr. Bellenger: We will soon hear what my hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has to say. The trustees of the Members' Fund endeavour to be as generous as they possibly can to the applicants who come before us and the right under this provision to restore a pension is to be subject to the discretion of the trustees, whoever they may be.
    Since the trustees will come to know all the circumstances, it would be far better to leave it to their discretion, rather than withdraw that discretion, which is what the Amendment would do. Of course, I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that we must be very careful not to give the public the impression that we are making things very easy for ourselves and our widows, but the test is what we should do in relation to the circumstances of a former Member or his widow.
    The circumstances of an M.P.'s life are not comparable to those of Service pensioners, who enter into fixed contracts and can reasonably look forward to an income for life and to pensions for their widows. An M.P., on the contrary, is at the mercy of the wind, whether it blows left or right. He can be deprived of his employment by the electorate. If he is to be entitled to a pension by virtue of his service in Parliament, we ought to provide as generously as we possibly can for the widow, who might be well advanced in years.
    I suggest, therefore, that we leave the discretion to the trustees of the Fund
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    who, probably—I hope that this is the case—will be the same right hon. and hon. Members who are the trustees of the present Members' Fund. As Members of Parliament themselves, I think that they would be the best judges of the circumstances in deciding whether or not to restore a widow's pension.
    5.15 p.m.
    Mr. Diamond: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) for the constructive way in which he moved the Amendment. I recognise that this matter requires explanation, justification and relating to the context of the rest of the Bill. But my right hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) put his finger on the key point in saying that this is really a question of discretion of the trustees—whether they should have that discretion or whether it should be withdrawn from them.
    Of course, the Government recognise that, in so far as the service of an M.P. is comparable with any other kind of professional service, he should not—and this provision does not make him—receive a pension better than he would receive in a similar walk of life. There is a difficulty about that interpretation, of course, because no other person has a kind of job in exactly the same circumstances as an M.P. In no other job can one, as it were, be thrown out at less than a moment's notice. An election can take place and one can lose one's job overnight. No other job is subject to so many variables which are quite unforeseeable.
    In addition, the period of service as an M.P. usually comes at a time of life between certain ages and is usually limited. The average length of service is only 15 years and that is why the Bill provides under the pension scheme heavy additions to the pension for each of the first 15 years' service. There is really no comparable job. It is as lawyers, I understand, would put it, sui generis—it is an exclusive kind of job not readily comparable with any other.
    In trying to relate it to similar occupations, the main thing we have to guide us in that respect is the Lawrence Report. I believe that the Government are right in sticking as far as possible to that Report, which takes the matter out of our hands so that no one can say that we, as

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    Members of Parliament, are making specially generous provison for ourselves.
    The Lawrence Committee did not dot every "i" and cross every "t". It laid down in general terms, and recommended, what the pension scheme should provide. As one would expect, however, it did not fill in all the details. It is, after all, not for such a body to fill in details. One gets proper actuarial advice and on it bases the scheme in detail. The scheme stands as a whole and the actuarial calculations are based as a whole on everything that is included in the Bill.
    This provision is not to be found only in our proposed pension scheme. It is found throughout the Civil Service. It is a standard provision in the public service that what one seeks to do is to provide for the widow of the employee—in this case, the widow of the M.P. Those of us who have served as trustees to the Members' Fund or, as I have, as trustees of the Labour Members' Fund, will appreciate that all sorts of unexpected things happen to the circumstances of former Members and that one must provide for need. That is what we are seeking to do We want to provide for the widow for the whole time she needs that help. That, surely, is what we want to do.
    In certain circumstances, of course, the widow will not need help. If she remarries, and her new husband is able to look after her, she does not need help then. But if her second husband is not able to keep her, or dies—there she is, the Member's widow in need. Surely we must look at the individual circumstances. It is not right necessarily to try and lay down the law now and say precisely what is to happen.
    Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: The hon. Gentleman said that in the Civil Service there are precisely similar provisions. In such cases, with whom does the discretion lie?
    Mr. Diamond: My immediate answer to that is that I shall have to think about it and, in the course of thinking about it, no doubt I shall recollect.
    Sir D. Renton: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us whether it lies within the discretion of anybody within the Civil Service, for example? He spoke of the whole range of the public service. Is it
    414
    provided as a right, or is there a discretion? Can he go so far as to say that?
    Mr. Diamond: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, particularly for his intervention. It was obvious that discretion would have to lie in somebody's hands. I am sorry that I had forgotten it for the moment. It lies in the hands of the Treasury.
    The point is that there have to be trustees. What one seeks to do is to provide for one's widow in fair weather and foul. Then, if there are circumstances which are unexpected or unanticipated and even borderline, it is right to leave the trustees to look at the facts and to make a decision having regard to need. This is the way in which these pensions schemes are carried on and I am sure that what my right hon. Friend for Bassetlaw has said is the way the Members' Fund trustees look at the matter. The Government see no earthly reason why the same body of Members' Fund trustees should not be appointed, and this is a matter which will no doubt receive consideration. This is certainly the way in which the trustees of the Labour Fund look at the matter.
    However, this provision does not rest on its own. There is the same kind of discretion in a number of other ways in other provisions in the Bill. For example, Clause 8(4) deals with the subject of cohabitation, a difficult subject to deal with. It may be cohabitation of a kind which one wants to take fully into account, and it may not be. One may want to provide a pension in these circumstances and one may not. The cohabitation may cease and one may want to resume the pension. There is a whole host of borderline cases of that kind.
    Similarly, in Clause 9(4) there arises the question of the restoration of the widower's pension if his subsequent marriage comes to an end, or if exceptional reasons justify it. There is a similar provision in Clause 10(5) where the payment of a children's pension on remarriage of the surviving parent may come into question if exceptional reasons justify it.
    In short, there are four or five similar provisions in the Bill all resting supremely on the hypothesis that what we are seeking to do is to provide for the dependent person, be he widow,

    415
    widower, or child, and that circumstances may arise which cannot be fully foretold, so that the sensible thing to do is to leave it to the trustees and to give them discretion to act reasonably at the time to see that there is adequate protection.
    Mr. Wise: Do the trustees have discretion to vary the amount of the pension? If they restore the pension, do they have discretion to restore the whole of it, or only part of it?
    Mr. Diamond: The trustees have power to pay a given pension or not. This is not a hardship fund but a pension scheme, and in a pension scheme the trustees are given discretion as to whether the circumstances justify the payment of the pension.
    I can alleviate the conscience of the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral and quote further precedents, for he is particularly concerned, as I am, that this should not be thought to be a particularly generous scheme for Members of Parliament—as it is not. I am told that a Service widow who remarries may be granted a pension at the discretion of the Defence Council if her second husband dies and she is in need. I am told that the judges have a scheme, not exactly the same, but broadly similar to what is here proposed. The precedents are well established and this follows the practice which we ourselves follow in the House in terms of the Members' Fund and the Labour Members' Fund. The discretion is sensible and I hope that the House will allow the Bill to go through in its present form.
    Mr. Wise: The difference is that in this case a pension can be paid to a widow while her second husband is still alive. That does not happen in the other circumstances.
    Mr. Diamond: Yes, it is exactly comparable. The thing to cotton on to is not the marital status, but the question of need. It is possible for a Member's widow to have remarried and to be in need while her second husband is alive. That second husband may suffer a dreadful illness, for example. The lady may no longer be in her first flush of youth and her husband may have a severe illness and be completely unable to earn a
    416
    living. If there are no other resources, she may be in need. I would have said that it would be our wish that such a widow should be taken care of so far as we can reasonably provide, within the actuarial facts of the scheme. I hope that that will satisfy the House.
    Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: I am sure that what the hon. Gentleman has told us about the Civil Service generally is a fact, and that removes one of my doubts, although whether the Treasury will always be as soft-hearted in carrying out its trusteeship as the hon. Gentleman himself I am not so certain.
    However, what of the Armed Forces? I shall have to ask my hon. Friends to divide on the Amendment unless I am satisfied that it is the case that the Armed Forces have the same sort of benefit. I have the Army Pensions Warrant before me and I see no trace in that of the possible concession to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. Does the Army Council have discretion or under the new régime has the Defence Council? And what happens in the Navy and the Royal Air Force?
    Mr. Diamond: The best answer I can give is that the Services' provision is not yet published in its final form. It will probably be Article 222 and when it is published in its final form the right hon. and learned Gentleman will see that there is reasonable precedent and a reasonable similarity to what we are doing here. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is anxious that we should not appear to be exceptionally generous to ourselves, and I can assure him that that is the case.
    Sir D. Renton: If I may have the leave of the House to speak again; I am very unhappy about this position. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) has raised the question of the Armed Forces and the hon. Gentleman has replied, but we have not had a reply about the police. The Chief Secretary said that what is in the Clause applies throughout the whole range of the public service, but I would wish to be assured that the police now have a provision—they did not have it before—on the lines of the Clause. I would feel very unhappy about seeking a privilege for a widow of mine which the widow of a policeman did not have.

    417
    The hon. Gentleman has said that we must be treated as something quite different from all other people. His words were that we were not comparable with those in any other job. Surely that makes it all the more important that we should not for ourselves and our families seek any kind of privilege which others may not have. It was not consistent for the hon. Gentleman to say that, on the one hand, we were not like anybody else and, on the other, that what we were giving to ourselves was standard practice throughout the publc service. We must be careful to ensure that what we provide for ourselves is completely proper and not contrary to what has been done in, at any rate, some sectors.
    5.30 p.m.
    Mr. Bellenger: Surely the right hon. and learned Member's argument deals, not with denying this right to widows of ex-M.P.s, but to improving the situation, if it needs improving, of police pensioners. Under the Members' scheme, we have the power to do more or less what we like concerning the widows of ex-M.P.s. The only proviso is that they must show need. I presume—and I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will accept this—
    Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): Order. This is becoming a Committee debate.
    Mr. Bellenger: I do not want to turn it into a Committee debate, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman asked leave to address the House again. I do not propose to speak as long as he did, otherwise I should have to ask for leave, too.
    Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The right hon. and learned Gentleman rose simply to intervene on a point of clarification.
    Mr. Bellenger: I am coming to the end of my intervention, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.
    Is not the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that under the Members' scheme we have the right to do more or less what we like? Does not subsection (3) make the same sort of provision?
    Sir D. Renton: I do not know whether I am allowed to answer the right hon. Gentleman, but I should hate to base any future action on the present Mem-
    418
    bers' scheme, which most of us have regarded as very unsatisfactory for many years.
    Mr. Diamond: I gather that it is the wish of the Opposition that I should intervene once more. Therefore, with the leave of the House, I should like to make one or two more remarks.
    The policemen's scheme is not comparable. That provides that if a policeman remarries after he has retired the second wife is not eligible for a pension in the event of widowhood. I hope that what I said did not seem to indicate that every scheme in the public service was of an identical kind. I could not possibly allege that. There is a vast number of schemes, each of which has its own detailed regulations. All that I am saying about this discretion in relation to widows is that it is repeated in the Civil Service scheme and other schemes. Broadly, this is a similar scheme to that of the judges' scheme.
    However, one can pick out a number of other schemes which provide for different benefits and in which one pays for what one gets. Hon. and right hon. Members must not forget that this is a question of marrying benefits to payments. The payments are laid down, and, by and large, they should produce the benefits which we have in mind. Of course, it is possible to devise a scheme which pays benefits of much less value and, therefore, which may cost less in contributions by both employee and employer, or, in our case, by the Exchequer and the Members. Broadly, we must take account of both benefits and costs.
    There are plenty of precedents for treating the matter in this way. I repeat that a Member of Parliament is not easily comparable with people in any other walk of life. But this is not a new invention. It follows solid and widespread precedent, and I should have thought that the discretion laid down in the Bill was wise.
    Sir M. Redmayne: The Chief Secretary has dealt with this point with great sympathy and patience. It seems to me that the weakness of what he says lies in his statement that what we are considering is similar to precedent. But the precedents are not precise. That is the great difficulty.

    419
    I do not share the view of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) about the Members' Fund. I think that the trustees of that Fund have done a very good job with great sympathy and have paid great care to every case.
    Sir D. Renton indicated assent.
    Sir M. Redmayne: I see that my right hon. and learned Friend agrees.
    Sir D. Renton: Yes. I was not criticising the trustees.
    Sir M. Redmayne: I must have misunderstood my right hon. and learned Friend.
    The Chief Secretary says with absolute justice that in the Civil Service the same conditions apply because the Treasury acts as trustee and in the Armed Forces the same conditions apply because the Defence Council acts as trustee. However, we all know and must admit that the care, sympathy and personal knowledge which would be applied by the trustees of our own fund must be better than that applied by the Treasury and Defence Council. That is no disrespect to those bodies. All hon. Members will have had experience of cases which they have taken up on behalf of constituents and will know how infernally difficult it is to get a satisfactory answer.
    Therefore, although the Chief Secretary has done his best to make out his case, I think that we must be particularly careful to ensure that there is precise justice between the way in which we treat ourselves or our widows and the way in which the widows of men in other services are treated. To mark the point, and while accepting fully that the Chief Secretary has made the best case
    he can, I think that we should divide on the Amendment.
    Sir R. Cary: Arising from what was said by the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger), may I, as a trustee of the Members' Fund for some years, say that we cannot do more or less what we like. The Members' Fund is a benevolent fund. We have a discretionary power in operating it. We can deal with cases of hardship. But in framing the Fund the House put leading strings on us.
    It is a little misleading of the right hon. Gentleman to say that we can do more or less what we like for the widow of a Member. We have some flexibility, but we are limited to that. We can deal with certain cases of express hardship, but no more.
    Mr. Bellenger: I used, perhaps, a rather indiscreet expression, but, nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman will know that under the Act under which we operate we can use considerable discretion. That is all I am asking right hon. and hon. Members opposite to allow the trustees of this fund to do.
    Mr. Wise: We are grateful to the Chief Secretary for his very careful and courteous answers, but I think that we are entitled to a little more clarification because in some respects they were slightly contradictory.
    We should get it on record that what is in subsection (3) is not standard practice throughout the public service but is of our own invention. May we agree on that?
    Question put, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Bill:—
    The House divided: Ayes 244, Noes 201.

    Division No. 58.]

    AYES

    [5.39 p.m.

    Abse, Leo

    Bessell, Peter

    Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

    Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

    Bishop, E.S.

    Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)

    Alldritt, W. H.

    Blackburn, F.

    Carter-Jones, Lewis

    Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

    Blenkinsop, Arthur

    Chapman, Donald

    Armstrong, Ernest

    Boardman, H.

    Coleman, Donald

    Atkinson, Norman

    Boston, T.G.

    Conlan, Bernard

    Bacon, Miss Alice

    Bowden, Rt. Hn. H. W. (Leics S. W.)

    Corbet, Mrs. Freda

    Bagier, Gordon A. T.

    Boyden, James

    Cousins, Rt. Hn. Frank

    Barnett, Joel

    Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

    Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

    Baxter, William

    Bray, Dr. Jeremy

    Crawshaw, Richard

    Beaney, Alan

    Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

    Crossman, Rt. Hn. R. H. S.

    Bellenger, Rt. Hn. F. J.

    Brown, Hugh D. (Glasgow, Provan)

    Cullen, Mrs. Alice

    Bence, Cyril

    Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & Fbury)

    Dalyell, Tam

    Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood

    Buchan, Norman (Renfrewshire, W.)

    Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

    Bennett. J. (Glasgow, Bridgeton)

    Buchanan, Richard

    Davies, Harold (Leek)

    Davies, Ifor (Cower)

    Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)

    Perry, Ernest G.

    Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

    Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

    Popplewell, Ernest

    Delargy, Hugh

    Jones, Dan (Burnley)

    Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)

    Dell, Edmund

    Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

    Probert, Arthur

    Diamond, John

    Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)

    Pursey, Cmdr. Harry

    Dodds, Norman

    Kelley, Richard

    Randall, Harry

    Doig, Peter

    Kenyon, Clifford

    Rankin, John

    Driberg, Tom

    Kerr, Dr. David (W'Worth, Central)

    Redhead, Edward

    Duffy, A. E. P.

    Lawson, George

    Rees, Merlyn

    Dunnett, Jack

    Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

    Reynolds, G. W.

    Edelman, Maurice

    Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)

    Rhodes, Geoffrey

    Edwards, Rt. Hn. Ness (Caerphilly)

    Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)

    Richard, Ivor

    Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

    Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

    Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

    English, Michael

    Lipton, Marcus

    Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

    Ennals, David

    Lomas, Kenneth

    Robertson, John (Paisley)

    Ensor, David

    Loughlin, Charles

    Robinson, Rt. Hn. K. (St.Pancras, N.)

    Evans, loan (Birmingham, Yardley)

    Lubbock, Eric

    Rose, Paul B.

    Fernyhough, E.

    McBride, Neil

    Ross, Rt. Hn. William

    Finch, Harold (Bedwellty)

    McCann, J.

    Rowland, Christopher

    Fletcher, Sir Eric (Islington, E.)

    MacDermot, Niall

    Sheldon, Robert

    Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

    McGuire, Michael

    Shinwell, Rt. Hn. E.

    Fletcher, Raymond (llkeston)

    Mclnnes, James

    Shore, Peter (Stepney)

    Floud, Bernard

    McKay, Mrs. Margaret

    Short, Rt. Hn. E. (N'c'tle-on-Tyne, C.)

    Foley, Maurice

    Mackenzie, Alasdair (Ross & Crom'ty)

    Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N. E.)

    Foot, Michael (Ebbw vale)

    Mackie, George Y. (C'ness & S'land)

    Silkin, John (Deptford)

    Ford, Ben

    Mackie, John (Enfield, E.)

    Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

    Freeson, Reginald

    MacMillan, Malcolm

    Slater, Joseph (Sedgefield)

    Garrett, W. E.

    MacPherson, Malcolm

    Small, William

    Garrow, A.

    Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

    Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

    George, Lady Megan Lloyd

    Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

    Snow, Julian

    Grey, Charles

    Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

    Solomons, Henry

    Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

    Mallalieu, J.P.W. (Huddersfield, E.)

    Soskice, Rt. Hn. Sir Frank

    Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)

    Manuel, Archie

    Spriggs, Leslie

    Griffiths, Will (M'chester Exchange)

    Mapp, Charles

    Steele, Thomas

    Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.

    Mason, Roy

    Stonehouse, John

    Hale, Leslie

    Maxwell, Robert

    Stones, William

    Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

    Mellish, Robert

    Summerskill, Dr. Shirley

    Hamilton, William (West Fife)

    Mendelson, J. J.

    Swain, Thomas

    Hamling, William (Woolwich, W.)

    Millan, Bruce

    Symonds, J. B.

    Hannan, William

    Miller, Dr. M. S.

    Taverne, Dick

    Harper, Joseph

    Milne, Edward (Blyth)

    Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

    Hart, Mrs. Judith

    Molloy, William

    Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)

    Hattersley, Roy

    Monslow, Walter

    Thomas, lorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

    Hayman, F. H.

    Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

    Thornton, Ernest

    Hazell, Bert

    Morris, Charles (Openshaw)

    Tinn, James

    Heffer, Eric S.

    Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick (SheffieldPk)

    Tuck, Raphael

    Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret

    Murray, Albert

    Urwin, T. W.

    Hill, J. (Midlothian)

    Neal, Harold

    Varley, Eric G.

    Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)

    Newens, Stan

    Wainwright, Edwin

    Holman, Percy

    Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)

    Walden, Brian(All Saints)

    Horner, John

    Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip(Derby,S.)

    Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

    Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas

    Norwood, Christopher

    Wallace, George

    Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)

    Ogden, Eric

    Warbey, William

    Howarth, Robert L. (Bolton, E.)

    O'Malley, Brian

    Watkins, Tudor

    Howie, W.

    Oram, Albert E. (E. Ham, S.)

    Whitlock, William

    Hoy, James

    Orbach, Maurice

    Wilkins, W. A.

    Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

    Orme, Stanley

    Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)

    Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

    Oswald, Thomas

    Williams, Mrs. Shirley(Hitchin)

    Hunter, Adam (Dunfermline)

    Owen, Will

    Williams, W. T. (Warrington)

    Hunter, A. E. (Feltham)

    Padley, Walter

    Willis, George (Edinburgh, E.)

    Hynd, H. (Accrington)

    Page, Derek (King's Lynn)

    Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

    Hynd, John (Attercliffe)

    Paget, R. T.

    Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.

    Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

    Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles

    Woof, Robert

    Irving, Sydney (Dartford)

    Park, Trevor (Derbyshire, S. E.)

    Yates, Victor (Ladywood)

    Janner, Sir Barnett

    Pavitt, Laurence

    Zilliacus, K.

    Jeger, George (Goole)

    Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)

    Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

    Pentland, Norman

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

    Mrs. Slater and Mr. Fitch.

    NOES

    Agnew, Commander Sir Peter

    Berry, Hn. Anthony

    Brooke, Rt. Hn. Henry

    Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

    Biffen, John

    Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

    Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

    Biggs-Davison, John

    Bruce-Gardyne, J.

    Anstruther-Gray, Rt. Hn. Sir W.

    Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel

    Buchanan-Smith, Alick

    Astor, John

    Black, Sir Cyril

    Buck, Antony

    Atkins, Humphrey

    Blaker, Peter

    Bullus, Sir Eric

    Baker, W. H. K.

    Bossom, Hn. Clive

    Buxton, R. C.

    Barlow, Sir John

    Box, Donald

    Campbell, Gordon

    Batsford, Brian

    Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. J.

    Carlisle, Mark

    Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton

    Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward

    Channon, H. P. G.

    Bell, Ronald

    Braine, Bernard

    Chataway, Christopher

    Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)

    Brinton, Sir Tatton

    Chichester-Clark, R.

    Berkeley, Humphry

    Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col.SirWalter

    Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)

    422

    423

    Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)

    Hordern, Peter

    Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James

    Cooper, A. E.

    Hornby, Richard

    Redmayne, Rt. Hn. Sir Martin

    Cordle, John

    Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame P.

    Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David

    Corfield, F. V.

    Howe, Geoffrey (Bebington)

    Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

    Costain, A. P.

    Hunt, John (Bromley)

    Ridsdale, Julian

    Courtney, Cdr. Anthony

    Hutchison, Michael Clark

    Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)

    Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)

    Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)

    Roots, William

    Cunningham, Sir Knox

    Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)

    Royle, Anthony

    Curran, Charles

    Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith

    Russell, Sir Ronald

    Dance, James

    Johnson Smith, G.

    Scott-Hopkins, James

    Davies, Dr. Wyndham (Perry Barr)

    Kerr, Sir Hamilton (Cambridge)

    Sharples, Richard

    d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry

    Kershaw, Anthony

    Shepherd, William

    Dean, Paul

    Kilfedder, James A.

    Sinclair, Sir George

    Digby, Simon Wingfield

    Kimball, Marcus

    Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'd & Chiswick)

    Dodds-Parker, Douglas

    King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

    Spearman, Sir Alexander

    du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward

    Kitson, Timothy

    Stanley, Hn. Richard

    Eden, Sir John

    Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

    Stodart, J. A.

    Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

    Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

    stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm

    Emery, Peter

    Litchfield, Capt. John

    Studholme, Sir Henry

    Errington, Sir Eric

    Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)

    Summers, Sir Spencer

    Farr, John

    Longbottom, Charles

    Talbot, John E.

    Fletcher-Cooke, Charles (Darwen)

    Loveys, walter H.

    Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

    Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)

    McAdden, Sir Stephen

    Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)

    Gammans, Lady

    MacArthur, Ian

    Teeling, Sir William

    Giles, Rear-Admiral Morgan

    McLaren, Martin

    Temple, John M.

    Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, Central)

    Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

    Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

    Glover, Sir Douglas

    McMaster, Stanley

    Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Conway)

    Glyn, Sir Richard

    McNair-Wilson, Patrick

    Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon. S.)

    Goodhew, Victor

    Maginnis, John E.

    Thorneycroft, Rt. Hn. Peter

    Gower, Raymond

    Mathew, Robert

    Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

    Grant, Anthony

    Maude, Angus

    Tweedsmuir, Lady

    Grant-Ferris, R.

    Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.

    van Straubenzee, W. R.

    Grieve, Percy

    Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.

    Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John

    Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)

    Meyer, Sir Anthony

    Vickers, Dame Joan

    Griffiths, Peter (Smethwick)

    Mills, Peter (Torrington)

    Walder, David (High Peak)

    Gurden, Harold

    Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)

    Walker, Peter (Worcester)

    Hall, John (Wycombe)

    Mitchell, David

    Wall, Patrick

    Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

    Monro, Hector

    Walters, Dennis

    Hamilton, M. (Salisbury)

    More, Jasper

    Ward, Dame Irene

    Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N. W.)

    Morgan, W. G.

    Weatherill, Bernard

    Harris, Reader (Heston)

    Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

    Webster, David

    Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

    Murton, Oscar

    Wells, John (Maidstone)

    Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Maccles'd,)

    Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

    Whitelaw, William

    Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)

    Nugent, Rt. Hn. Sir Richard

    Williams, Sir Rolf Dudley (Exeter)

    Harvie Anderson, Miss

    Onslow, Cranley

    wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

    Hastings, Stephen

    Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

    Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

    Hawkins, Paul

    Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian

    wise, A. R.

    Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel

    Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)

    Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

    Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward

    page, John (Harrow, W.)

    Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher

    Higgins, Terence L.

    page, R. Graham (Crosby)

    Woodnutt, Mark

    Hiley, Joseph

    Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)

    Wylie, N. R.

    Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)

    peel, John

    Younger, Hn. George

    Hirst, Geoffrey

    Pickthorn, Rt. Hn. Sir Kenneth

    Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin

    Pounder, Rafton

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

    Hopkins, Alan

    Prior, J. M. L.

    Mr. Pym and Mr. R. W Elliott.

    Clause 16.—(PENSION OF PRIME MINISTER.)
    Mr. Diamond: I beg to move, in page 13, line 1, to leave out from "who" to the end of line 2 and to insert:
    "at any time after the commencement of this Act holds or has held office as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury".
    This Amendment is moved purely for the sake of clarity. Clause 16(2) provides for the pension of the widow or widower and children of a Prime Minister. The wording here is a little awkward. It is intended to cover both the person who ceased to be Prime Minister before his death and the person who dies while he is Prime Minister. The Clause, as originally drafted, perhaps did not make this absolutely clear, and therefore I move this Amendment to remove any possibility
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    of doubt. The Amendment makes it clear that both those contingencies are provided for.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Mr. Diamond: I beg to move, in page 13, line 3, to leave out from "as" to "but" in line 5 and to insert:
    "if the deceased had been entitled at the time of his death to a pension under section 7 of this Act of an annual amount equal to two-thirds of the pension to which he was entitled or prospectively entitled under the said section 4(2)".
    It would be convenient, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if we could deal with this Amendment and the following one at the same time, since they are related to each other. In moving the Amendment the first thing I must do is to repeat my

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    gratitude to the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) who raised in Committee a question about the clarity of this subsection.
    To refer quite shortly to the background, Clause 16(2) provides that a Prime Minister's widow, or widower, and children shall be eligible for pension under Clauses 8 to 10 of the Bill. This is subject to two modifications of which the second is that the Prime Minister's own pension shall be treated as reduced by one-third for the purposes of calculating the widow's pension. Clauses 8 to 10 provide that a widow's or widower's pensions are fixed at one-half of the spouse's rate, and the intention of Clause 16(2) is that the dependants of a Prime Minister shall be pensionable in the same way as dependants of Members, but that the amount of the dependants' pensions shall be related to the original pension in a different way. By the original pension I refer to the Prime Minister's ex-officio pension of £4,000. Half the rate of pension for the widows of Members was specifically recommended by the Lawrence Committee, but it made no recommendation on a rate for a Prime Minister's widow. As the normal widow's pension in the public service is one-third of the husband's rate, and as Mr. Speaker Morrison's widow was also granted a pension of one-third of the rate, one is proposing in the Bill that that shall also apply to the Prime Minister's widow's pension.
    The wording previously did achieve this but achieved it by a method which was not, perhaps, as clear as it might have been and to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman drew attention. Therefore, these two Amendments clarify this by leaving out Clause 16(2,b) and writing the reduction, that is to say, the reduction of from one-half to one-third, into the main part of Clause 16(2). The widow's pension now made payable is to be as if the husband had been entitled under Clause 7 to a pension two-thirds of his actual ex-officio pension.
    It will be appreciated, of course, that if we reduce the Prime Minister's pension to two-thirds and then provide a widow's pension of one-half of two-thirds, we are getting back to the original one-third which we sought to provide in the first place. What one seeks to provide is one
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    third to the widow, and the way it is now being done is to say, take the Prime Minister's pension, and reduce it by one-third; we get two-thirds; and divide it by two, getting the one-third which we are seeking to get.
    I hope that makes it clear. It is very difficult to get one's arithmetic right when one is on one's feet, as you are well aware, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, from having heard some hon. Members make some extraordinary calculations from this Box and opposite. I hope I have got the arithmetic right and that I have made the matter clear to hon. Members, and I hope that the wording of the Amendment will be thought clear by hon. and right hon. Members opposite, and particularly the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire who raised the matter in the first place. This Amendment clarifies the original provision in making it clear that what we are doing is what is normal in a case of this kind. It is distinct from the Member's widow's pension, because the Member's widow's pension was laid down by Lawrence, and we have accepted Lawrence, and the Prime Minister's pension is a separate matter.
    Sir D. Renton: I should like to thank the hon. Member for dealing with this point in the way he has done. There was never any dispute between us as to the substance of the matter. It was merely a question whether the drafting was correct. Speaking for myself, I must say that I think he has now got it right.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Further Amendment made: In page 13, line 12, leave out paragraph (b).—[Mr. Diamond.]

    Clause 20.—(MINOR AND CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS AND REPEALS.)
    6 p.m.
    Mr. Diamond: I beg to move, in page 14, line 20, after "1869" to insert:
    "and the Department of Technical Co-operation Act 1961".
    I hope it will be in order if at the same time we discuss my Amendment to the First Schedule, in page 15, to leave out line 34; and my Amendment to the Fifth Schedule, in page 22, line 15. They all relate to the same point.
    These three Amendments taken together provide for the dissolution of

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    the Department of Technical Co-operation. The functions of that Department have been transferred to the Minister of Overseas Development under an Order in Council which was Statutory Instrument 2050 of 1964. It now remains to provide for the dissolution of the Department. This is done in the Amendment and in the Clause. The Amendments to the Schedules I have referred to are consequential upon this Amendment. I think the matter is perfectly straightforward and I shall not delay the House unduly upon it.
    Amendment agreed to.

  Schedule 1.—(MINISTERIAL SALARIES.)
  Amendment made: In page 15, leave out line 34.—[Mr. Diamond.]
  Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: I beg to move, in page 16, column 2, to leave out lines 3 to 18 and to insert:

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250

  4,250.

  The Amendment deals with the salaries of junior Ministers. I have already praised the work of the Lawrence Committee. I think that the whole House feels that it did a very valuable job and examined the whole of our problems with great care. I also made it clear that I thought it was the Government's responsibility to accept or to reject the Committee's recommendations. The Government accepted the Committee's recommendations on Members' pay. I think that the figure was a little higher than I would have put forward, but I did not feel that the difference was sufficient to justify the controversy about that.
  The Government have not accepted the Lawrence Committee's recommendations on Ministers' salaries, and have halved the suggested increases. I do not think
  428
  that senior Ministers, or those of intermediate status, deserve too much sympathy. I have never been a junior Minister, but I say that they do deserve some sympathy. The Lawrence Committee recommended that their salaries should be £5,000 a year, compared with £2,500. Because of the maze of figures, it is rather difficult to be quite certain that one is right about them, but I think that in days gone by Parliamentary Secretaries and Under-Secretaries were paid £2,500, and the Lawrence proposal was that they should be paid £5,000.
  The Government have halved the increase, and have suggested £3,750. The Amendment does not go so far as to restore the Lawrence figure, but it proposes to give them £500 a year more than the Government have proposed. It might be asked why we should plead this cause so strongly. This is not the first time that I have done so. I mentioned it during the Second Reading of the Bill when I said that the Government were wrong to scale down the Lawrence Committee's recommendations with regard to junior Ministers.
  I put forward this alteration because the future of all Administrations depends very much on getting the right type of people to accept Ministerial careers. It is most necessary that the money going with the job should be an attraction, rather than a deterrent. In our experience in this House we all know of many people who would have made good Ministers, but who could not afford to take on Ministerial rank because of their commitments of one sort or another.
  That is wrong, because appointment has certain hazards. The Minister concerned may prove not to be the success which was expected, and he may have a short Ministerial career. Equally, because of the fortunes of political warfare, the Government which he adorns may not survive for very long. It is quite a big decision to make, because he may have to sever his business connections, stop practising a profession, or abandon his business contacts, in the hope that some day he may be able to resume them. There is no certainty about his appointment, and to a cormparatively young man with family commitments, or perhaps relatives dependent on him, it can be an important decision for him to make. In those circumstances,

  429
  we should make certain that no one is deterred from accepting these responsibilities by the size of the financial remuneration.
  This is a case in which we should accept the figure which the Lawrence Committee put forward after careful consideration. It is not for me to say how the Committee arrived at these figures, but I think I can say without breach of confidence that the hope which I expressed was that the Committee would look at his from the point of view of the junior Minister before paying too much attention to senior Ministers. I thought that it would be better to get the junior Ministers' position right before considering that of Members of the Cabinet. I hope that the Committee approached it in that way, and in a sense worked up from the figure of £5,000 for junior Ministers to the figure which was put forward for senior Ministers. I do not know whether the Committee did that, but I hope that it did.
  I ask the Government to think again about this matter. I have always thought that some increase was needed in Members' pay. I have always thought it intolerable that people should be Members of this House and be financially embarrassed through no fault of their own. I felt strongly about this, and I hope that my strong feelings did a little to lead to what eventually happened, because I know that I was representing the views of many Members who spoke to me when I was Leader of the House.
  I feel equally strongly about the junior Ministers. It is wrong to halve the Lawrence Committee's recommendation. I hope that the Government will think again, because I believe that this will affect the quality and character of those who become Ministers.
  Mr. Neil Marten: I support the Amendment, partly because I was one of the Parliamentary Secretaries to whom my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) referred, and also because Parliamentary Secretaries in the Government now cannot speak on this subject; and I there fore feel that I ought to act as their shop steward in this case. I doubt whether I have a vested interest in this, because on the imminent return of a Conservative Government I doubt whether I would be asked to be Parliamentary Secretary
  430
  again. Anyhow, that is a matter of opinion.
  Before becoming a Member of Parliament I had a job at which I earned as much as I could. I set, according to my own lights, a standard of living for my family, and I think I am right in saying that during that short period I tried to live within my income. I was very pleased at being elected, and I sat on the back benches with a great sense of humility, initially anyhow. When I saw my right hon. Friends answering Questions and making speeches from the Dispatch Box, I said to myself, "I shall never get there", so I settled down to a life and job outside, and to doing my duty in Parliament.
  Suddenly, much to my surprise, I received a message to go and see the Prime Minister. I wondered at the time what it was all about. I wondered what I had done wrong, but I went along to see Mr. Macmillan. He told me that he would like me to join his son-in-law at the Ministry of Aviation. I was extremely surprised at this and said to him, "Well, Prime Minister, I must, in all honesty, make it quite clear that I know nothing at all about aviation". He did not exactly say, "Just the chap for the job", but he implied that when one joined a Ministry it was better to go there with an open mind than with pre-judged views on it.
  That was settled, and I did not at the time think of the financial consequences of my acceptance of the appointment, because I felt that if it was the Prime Minister's view that I could be of service to the Government, I would do the job. I was one of those who at that time thought that my job would not last for very long either because I would be found out as not being efficient and dropped, or there would be a General Election pretty soon. But neither of those things happened.
  I obtained the Prime Minister's permission to ring my wife because the appointment was not going to be announced for two days. She thought I was joking when I told her what had happened, but she accepted it in the end. Half an hour later she rang back and, being a wife, and having a family, she asked, "How does this affect us financially?" I told her that I thought that it could not last for too long, and I said that meanwhile we would have to accept a drop in our income. The next

  431
  day I went to see my bank manager, who was very kind. He said, "Yes, carry on, and in the fullness of time we shall adjust the matter". On 17th October, 1964, I received a letter about an overdraft. That is the background to one Parliamentary Secretary's accepting a job in the Government. I accepted it with great pride, and tried to do the job to the best of my ability.
  I welcome the increases provided in this Bill for a Parliamentary Secretary, but I take the view that he should receive at least half of what his Minister gets, because a Parliamentary Secretary has a considerable responsibility. His Minister is often away. In my case my right hon. Friend the Member for Preston, North (Mr. Amery), who did his job extremely well, went straight off in every Recess on a tour, to America to study American aviation, or to Australia, to see Blue Streak in operation and so on. During practically every Recess I was left in charge of the Ministry of Aviation, and I accepted the responsibility and was thoroughly happy to do so.
  As for the work actually done by a Parliamentary Secretary, I found myself working extremely hard in terms of hours. With great respect to my colleagues and senior Ministers, I must point out that a Parliamentary Secretary tends to have to deal with quite a lot of chores, which are very time-consuming. It is necessary for him to do a lot of background reading, and also to take responsibility for answering his share of Questions at the Box. In terms of hours alone a Parliamentary Secretary works almost as hard as his Minister, although he does not have the great ultimate responsibility of his Minister. I hope that the Government will agree to the Amendment, because the Bill is the last occasion for some years when we shall have the opportunity to adjust Ministers' salaries.
  I repeat what I said when I started: speaking as one who may be entitled to act as a shop steward for junior Ministers, I hope that the Government will agree to the Amendment.
  Mr. Chapman: I have a great deal of sympathy with the argument put forward by the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd). If the Bill had dealt mainly with the salaries of Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries
  432
  I would have had even more sympathy with it. But it deals not only with Parliamentary Secretaries and Ministers but also with the intermediate stage of Ministers of State. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Amendment were accepted we would be paying Parliamentary Secretaries at £4,250 and Ministers of State not exactly as is laid down in the Schedule but, as is now the custom, £4,500.
  In my view, we could not accept the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Amendment unless he was prepared to link it with an Amendment in connection with Ministers of State. A differential of £250 between the two jobs seems quite ridiculous and out of keeping with what we are intending. The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not refer to that point. If he wishes to stick to his Amendment he should have referred in his remarks to the level of salary at which he thought Ministers of State should start to be paid.
  Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: I thought that one of the benefits of the flexibility which the Government had sought was that they could put up the salary of any Minister of State to £8,500. They already have authority to do what the hon. Gentleman suggests.
  6.15 p.m.
  Mr. Chapman: I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I am only saying that in his remarks he should have made it clear that besides his proposal that we should pay Parliamentary Secretaries £4,250 he was also putting forward. as a linked part of his proposal, the suggestion that the present level of £4,500 in respect of Ministers of State should be increased, within the discretion provided in the Schedule. If not, there would not be a real differential between Parliamentary Secretaries and Ministers of State.
  We are very sensibly moving into a situation where we have three distinct grades of Ministers—Departmental Ministers, Ministers of State and Parliamentary Secretaries. I hope that we shall make increasing use of Ministers of State in the future, and maintain a proper differential between their salaries and those of Parliamentary Secretaries. If all that we can afford—or if all that the Government think is wise—is to pay Ministers of State about £4,500, or even £5,000, at

  433
  the moment, we should not so alter the differential as to involve paying Parliamentary Secretaries more than £3,750. The fault of the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that he is thinking of Parliamentary Secretaries in isolation, whereas he should think of them in conjunction with Ministers of State.
  Sir D. Renton: Does the hon. Member realise that his point would have been met if the Government had accepted my right hon. and learned Friend's Amendment, in page 15, line 31, at end insert:
  Miinster of State not in the Cabinet £5,625
  Then the differentials would be quite right as between full Ministers, Ministers of State not in the Cabinet, and junior Ministers.
  Mr. Chapman: I am sorry that that Amendment was not called. I would willingly have spoken to it. But I think that the arrangement is about right, with Ministers receiving £8,500, Ministers of State £4,500—although I would have liked to see them given a salary nearer £5,000-and then, at another significant differential below this, Parliamentary Secretaries receiving £3,750. In my view the arrangement is about right as the Government have it, and I do not think that we should accept the Amendment.
  Sir R. Cary: As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. N. Marten) has set the pattern for recounting reminiscences, I should like to tell the House that I remember a telephone message being made to my constituency in 1944 indicating to me that there was a possible vacancy for me in the Government, and asking whether it would be the sort of thing that might interest me. I volunteered the information that I could possibly catch the midnight train to London, and I duly presented myself at Downing Street. Unfortunately, the appointment that I was offered had the unfortunate word "unpaid" attached to it. I began my Ministerial duties with a very distinguished companion, but we suffered from being included in the bracket "unpaid". Subsequently, when I attended the customary eve of Session dinner at 10 Downing Street, from the welcome that I was given one would have thought that I had been made Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  434
  The Chief Secretary knows my views about Ministers of State. I take the point put forward by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman), but as an act of fairness I would say that the figure indicated in the Amendment is justifiable, and I hope that the Chief Secretary will treat it sympathetically. I say that because it does not cause any distortion in what is placed before the House. The modest enhancement that it represents should provide that degree of flexibility that is sought. If the hon. Gentleman accepts it he will meet the generally fair-minded wishes of the House.
  Sir D. Renton: The Chief Secretary showed in Committee that his heart was in the right place in this matter. This is a very important question. We must ensure that the arrangements that we make now will stand the test of time. We are making these alterations for the first time since 1830, and it is sad to reflect that the £3,750 which is proposed in the Bill for junior Ministers provides a smaller purchasing power than the £1,500 which was put forward for them in 1831, and which remained their salary until, partly due to the influence of Mr. Harold Macmillan, it was raised to £2,500 in 1957.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) made some very good points. I wonder if the House bore in mind, as he was speaking so modestly, the fact that when he took over the Department in the absence of his Minister he had half his Minister's salary, which Parliamentary Secretaries will not get unless we amend the Bill. Nevertheless, at £2,500 a year he was getting less than a good many of the civil servants in that Department. Yet he was in charge in the Minister's absence. This is a point which the Lawrence Committee did not even consider in relation to junior Ministers. It was considered in relation to Ministers. The Committee said that a Minister must have a bigger salary than the Permanent Secretary of the Department, but this point about Parliamentary Secretaries was completely overlooked by the Committee. The Committee did very well in other respects—I am not criticising it—but this point was completely overlooked.
  Hon. Gentlemen on the other side with connections with trades unions have spent

  435
  some of the best years of their lives fighting for differentials. Surely, when they come to this important question of the relationship between Ministers and junior Ministers, they should not ignore the differentials. Surely it is right that a junior Minister, with all the work which he has to do and with all the responsibility which he has to undertake, should have at least half of what the Minister has. The House and the country have suffered in the past, in the fairly recent past especially, because very able people—certainly on this side of the House and, I dare say, there may even have been cases on the other side—have had to turn down the chance of getting their first foothold on the ladder towards the Cabinet, simply because, owing to their family responsibilities and the financial sacrifices which they would have had to make, they could not afford to do it. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury was very lucky to have been given two days to think the matter over. Some of us had to make up our minds—
  Mr. Marten: For the record, I should say that it was two days before my appointment was announced. I accepted on the spot.
  Sir D. Renton: I thought that my hon. Friend had two days to think about it. But not all people asked to accept junior Ministerial office at fairly low salaries were given that opportunity.
  Also, I think, it should be borne in mind that, especially when the Minister himself is in the Cabinet, the junior Minister has to take charge of Bills in Standing Committee in this House. That involves a good deal of responsibility, as well as a good deal of work. The same thing arises—I believe that it occurs in this Parliament in several cases—when the Minister himself is in the Lords and the junior Minister has to fight his master's battles in this House. It is absurd and, I think, rather scandalous that he should not have half the salary which his Minister has.
  I say to the Chief Secretary, who naturally has the cost in mind—and rightly so—that it would be a false economy if we did not get this matter right. Indeed, the Treasury does not want to be faced with the necessity of having another Bill to retrieve the situ-
  436
  tion, in what could be embarrassing circumstances, in a few years' time. We want to get it right now. It would be a false economy not to accept my right hon. and learned Friend's Amendment.
  Mr. Kenneth Lewis: If I may intervene in this debate which seems to be between Ministers and ex-Ministers, I should like to say that I have never had a call on the telephone, but I feel in a happier frame of mind this evening than I have for a very long time because my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) has given me, for the first time, an indication why this was—obviously, because it was not thought that the salary was high enough. At any rate, when I look at this Bill, I am not quite so pessimistic as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury. I am sure that he has no cause to be pessimistic. I am sure that he has hopes for the future and perhaps I have hopes for the future, too. Therefore, this is the last chance which I shall have to make any impact on, and any contribution to, the salary which I may have if I were ever to be appointed a Minister.
  I think that my right hon. and learned Friend's Amendment should be accepted by the Government, because, as has been said, many junior Ministers have to give up outside employment where they could earn much more than they can as junior Ministers, even with this increase in salary. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) made some reference to Ministers of State, the intermediate Ministers between Parliamentary Secretaries and full Ministers. I think that the point has been made—and I want to emphasise it—that in our view there are too many Ministers of State in the present Government, and if there were to be fewer in any future Government, Parliamentary Secretaries would be in an even worse position.
  Secondly, I do not think that Parliamentary Secretaries at £3,750 a year, to say nothing of the Captain of the Queen's Bodyguard, the Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household, and the Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household, whatever they may do or whatever they may be—I think that they are generally the Whips—have salaries, as now fixed, which are good enough or high enough in relation to

  437
  Members of Parliament, even allowing for the fact that Ministers get part of their pay as a Member of Parliament. In that regard, the differential from the lower level to the second level is not sufficient. Junior Ministers have a tremendous amount of work to do, both in this House and in their Departments, as well as carrying on their normal work as Members of Parliament.
  We want the best people, whichever Government happens to be in office. I think that the present Government have made a mistake of judgment in fixing these salaries at —3,750 and —3,300. I hope that they will accept the reasonable Amendment of my right hon. and learned Friend.
  Mr. Diamond: I think that I had better bring this debate swiftly to an end, because, if we have a Division, I can see all the Parliamentary Secretaries and all the Whips voting against the Government if we go on much longer. That is a situation which one cannot face with equanimity.
  I want to be as helpful and as sympathetic as I can on this occasion and I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) for what he said. He said that my heart is in the right place. I hope that he will not misunderstand me if I say that I hope my heart is in the right place, that is to say not in my head. I hope that one can look at this matter objectively and sensibly. I agree that this is not a matter of saving money on the part of a Treasury Minister. One has to look at this objectively and carefully. One should not upset lightly the pattern of salaries which has been laid down in a report which we all regard as authoritative, independent and the only safe thing to rely on. If one does not rely on some outside report, one is subject to so many pressures at so many times that there is no way of determining the issues without great difficulty.
  6.30 p.m.
  I was most taken by the unusually modest and charming remarks of the very charming and modest Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten). I thought that he was over modest. The hon. Gentleman explained to us that when offered the job by the Prime Minister of the day he said, "But, Prime Minister, why should I have
  438
  this job? I know nothing about it.". Surely the hon. Gentleman is overmodest. He has as great a justification for accepting the job as any other of his right hon. and hon. Friends and it was wrong for him to put the case in that way. He made the point, which we well understand, that the present absolute figure proposed for Parliamentary Secretaries is low. Admittedly it is low. The present figure proposed for Whips is low, and one understands this, but what is one to do if one departs from the proposals laid down for the pattern of salaries by the Lawrence Report?
  Mr. Selwyn Lloyd rose—
  Mr. Diamond: I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will be good enough to let me explain the case. I am only starting by saying that I do understand the figure is low. If anyone wishes to say that in comparison with salaries available outside, the proposed salaries for a Member of Parliament and a Minister—particularly a Minister—are low, I should agree immediately. Everyone who has had experience of the commercial world and the professional world—particularly the commercial world—knows that salaries of this kind for the ability involved are very low.
  Two or three hon. Members have mentioned that what one should do is increase the salary of the lower-paid and not of the higher-paid Ministers. The right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) said this was the evidence that he put before the Committee. The right hon. and learned Gentleman—
  Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: I never suggested that there should be no increase for the higher paid Ministers.
  Mr. Diamond: I am sorry, a proportionately greater increase for the lower paid Ministers, I did not mean to misrepresent the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
  The same point was made by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire. What did the Committee recommend? The Committee looked at this very carefully and recommended a broad increase in a variety of salaries. For £2,000 it recommended £4,000—double. For —2,500 it recommended £5,000—double. For £3,750 it

  439
  recommended £7,500—double. In respect of all these salaries which, broadly, are for Parliamentary Secretaries, Whips and so on—junior Ministers, let us put it in that general category—it recommended doubling the salary. What did the Committee do in respect of Ministerial salaries? The point made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman was that there should be a disproportionately high increase in the lower salaries. What did the Committee do? It recommended an increase in the salaries of Departmental Ministers and Cabinet Ministers; not from £5,000 to £10,000 which would be double, or from £5,000 to £7,500, less than double, and so accede to the suggestion of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. It recommended increases from £5,000 to £12,000. The Committee said, "We have listened to all the evidence and considered all the relevant circumstances and the responsibility of Ministers and the need to get people to serve in these extremely responsible jobs from outside. We say that the Ministers, the higher-paid Ministers, require more than double their present salary". The Committee said the differential should be increased at the top. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have been putting to me that the differential should be increased at the bottom.
  Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: Does the hon. Gentleman really think that had the Lawrence Committee known that its recommendations for increases were to be halved, it would have retained these figures?
  Mr. Diamond: I realise that we have not adopted the precise figures of the Lawrence Committee. We have taken one half of the increase. What I am making clear, first, in reply to one hon. Gentleman, I think the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Sir R. Cary), who referred to distortion—and the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire talked about differentials—is that the only way to keep to the differentials proposed by the Lawrence Committee, and avoid distortion, was to keep to proportionate figures. For a Cabinet Minister getting £5,000 we get an increase even higher than for a Parliamentary Secretary getting £2,500. We have kept this pro-
  440
  portion in the Bill. My first point is that if we acceded to the suggestion which has been made to us—however one understands, as one does, that in absolute terms these figures are low and not high—we should be destroying the pattern put to us by the Lawrence Committee and we cannot do that, however sympathetically and carefully we look at it.
  It will be said to me, "You have not accepted the Lawrence Committee's proposals". No, we have not. We have gone as far as we could in accepting them. The needs of Ministers and the needs of the State have to be taken into account and we have said that it is not appropriate, and not needed, that there should be the full increase proposed by the Lawrence Committee. We therefore took one half of the proposed increase. In this we have kept the proportion right, and to the pattern recommended. I do not think, therefore, that one can reasonably be asked at this stage to take any particular band or grade out of that proportion and say, "We will now deliberately distort the recommendation and put in a different figure".
  Sir D. Renton: The Chief Secretary is saying that the proportions fixed by the Lawrence Committee are sacrosanct. Surely he must know that in fixing those proportions the Committee had in mind the gross amount for each salary it recommended. If it had recommended other amounts, it might well have decided on different proportions. The Government have reduced the total amounts, so surely the argument based on proportion is no longer a valid one.
  Mr. Diamond: If the Opposition feel that this salary of £3,750 should be £4,250, they should put down the proportionate increases in all the other salaries that would arise. That is their responsibility, if they want to depart from the pattern of the arbitration award. I admit that we have not accepted the arbitration award in full. We have accepted the differential laid down. Any of my hon. and right hon. Friends who has experience of wage or trade union negotiations knows that to keep the differentials right is a very important part of the total. Moreover, why refer only to Parliamentary Secretaries? There is a real case in respect of the Whips who are paid less.

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  The Whips are full-time paid officials who enable us to carry out our duties with varying success, as we saw last night and have seen today—with a little more success today than last night, but adequately successful.
  Sir R. Cary: Add a manuscript Amendment for the Whips.
  Mr. Diamond: We cannot do it in that way.
  I have considered this sympathetically. It is true that the salaries are low in absolute terms and that the salary differences between back bench Members and the Whips and Parliamentary Secretaries is low because we have accepted the recommendations 100 per cent. for Members of Parliament and only a 50 per cent. increase for Ministers. It is inevitable that there is that difference. We feel that this salary is not high, but that it is not impossibly low. The Parliamentary allowance has been increased. It is £1,250, which should, on average, fully re-imburse a junior Minister for his constituency duties in respect of which he is paid £1,250. In short, he receives a total of £5,000 out of which he has to make a variety of disbursements as a Member of Parliament. No one says that this is a lavish salary. We are not trying to create lavish salaries, quite the reverse, I am bound to say that it is a satisfactory minimum level.
  There has been a substantial increase and, compared with pre-war, it is indeed substantial. It was £1,250 to £1,500 prewar and I hope, therefore, that hon. Members will feel that I have been as sympathetic as I could be.
  By and large, one must proceed on some criterion and it would have been an impossibly difficult position had we been fixing our own salaries right, left and centre. There would have been pressure for all sorts of other increases, as indeed there have been. I have had to turn down much of this pressure. The Amendment is reasonable, but I think that the arguments I have put forward are also powerful.
  Mr. Marten: The hon. Gentleman said that a Minister had no disbursements to make out of his Ministerial salary. He does, but he cannot charge them. In addition, he loses any taxation benefit on the amount he must pay for, say, an
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  apartment which he might have in London, and this is a serious blow to some Ministers. Ministers in this position do have some suffering.
  Mr. Diamond: The hon. Member is well informed, probably from experience. I suppose that one might call it suffering. He is absolutely right and I deliberately referred to the amount of £1,250, which is a figure reimbursing his Parliamentary back-bench expenditure. It was not available as a reimbursement for the expenditure of a Minister. The world should indeed know that amounts of money do come out of the pockets—their own pockets—of Ministers and that it is part of taxed income. If a Minister lives in the Provinces and finds it necessary to have a flat in London he must pay for it out of his own pocket.
  Sir M. Redmayne: Is not the Chief Secretary aware that a Minister is treated differently from private Members in this respect, for he is technically assumed to be domiciled in London? There has always been thought to be a great injustice between the two and it might be put right. It is a matter of the Income Tax ruling.
  Amendment negatived.

  Schedule 5.—(ENACTMENTS REPEALED.)
  Mr. Diamond: I beg to move, in page 21, line 43, column 3, to leave out "The whole Act" and insert:
  "Section 1, and in section 2 the words from 'and shall be of an amount' to the end of the section".
  I can explain this Amendment briefly. It limits the extent of the repeal of the Ministerial Salaries Act, 1946, so as to leave unchanged that part of the Act which prescribes that salaries may be paid to such numbers of Lords in Waiting, not exceeding three, as the Treasury may determine.
  I took it to be the wish of hon. Members throughout our discussions—not only on this Bill, but on previous ones—that there should not be additional flexibility or as hon. Members opposite have said, additional patronage given to the Prime Minister in any unnecessary way. Indeed, that is a principle we all support. All good democrats and parliamentarians support it. It is because by an oversight a provision had been omitted which had this effect that I am

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  bringing this Amendment forward. The patronage to which I am referring is the Prime Minister's patronage in respect of Lords in Waiting.
  As the Bill stands that patronage is unlimited. It was not intended that this should be so and as I say an oversight crept in. I am moving the Amendment deliberately because the Government, on their own initiative, wish to restrict and remove that patronage which was not intended, but which crept in.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Further Amendments made: In page 21, line 45, leave out lines 45 to 47.
  In page 22, line 15, at end add:

  9 & 10 Eliz. 2. c. 30

  The Department of Technical Co-operation Act 1961.

  The whole Act.

  1964 c. 98.

  The Ministers of the Crown Act 1964.

  In Schedule 2, part II (in Schedule 2 to the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1957 as amended) the entry "Secretary for Technical Co-operation".

  —[Mr. Diamond.]

  Schedule, as amended, agreed to.
  6.43 p.m.
  Mr. Diamond: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
  I do not think that it is the wish of the House that there should be a long debate on this Motion. We have discussed the Bill fully on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

  ARMED FORCES (HOUSING LOANS) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  6.46 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Public Building and Works (Miss Jennie Lee): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The main purpose of the Bill is to extend for a further three years powers which exist under the 1949 Act, as extended in 1953 and 1958, for the Treasury to raise money by loan for expenditure on housing for the Services in the United Kingdom and to increase by £45 million the total which may be raised and issued under these Acts. A new Act is needed as otherwise the powers under the 1958 Act would lapse on 31st March of the present year.
  The purpose of the original 1949 Act was to ensure that provision of homes for married Service men in the United Kingdom would not be subjected to financial pressures because the capital expenditure involved had to be met out of current revenue. The Government at that time were determined that the Service man should have as good a deal as a civilian who, for instance, was seeking to rent a new council house.
  As hon. Members who are expert in these matters know, the provisions of the 1949 and subsequent Acts apply only to married quarters built in areas where they could be taken over for civilian purposes if no longer required by the Services. Married quarters in Northern Ireland, abroad, and in isolated parts of this country were excluded from the terms of the Act.
  I have read with interest the Report of the Advisory Committee on Recruiting under the chairmanship of Sir James Grigg and the comments of hon. Members from both sides of the House in previous debates, particularly some of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I am bound to say that the Report and their comments proved that more could have been done with the money and materials available for building for the Services, in particular for building quarters for married families, than was

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  done. I do not want to pursue that point too far at present, because we are concerned about what is happening now and our future—
  Mr. Simon Wingfield Digby: Would the hon. Lady elaborate on that statement? How does she think the money was spent? She has made quite a serious allegation, and I think that she should substantiate it.
  Miss Lee: I shall be very glad to do so.
  As I said, I do not want to pursue the point too far, but if the hon. Member reads the 1958 debate, and the Report of Sir James Grigg, he will see that some of the money available for building was not used. The argument was that it could not be used because of the movement of troops—that it was of no purpose to use it in town A because of troop movements to town B—but that was only partially true. There were other fixtures, such as the great barracks in London that were already slums. I only make the point in passing, because I am not convinced by arguments that we could not have made further progress by now in the provision of civilised accommodation for Service men than has been made.
  I want, however, to turn my attention to what is happening now and to what we want to see happening in the near future. The level of annual expenditure in the past was around £10 million, but this year, on these homes for married Service men, we expect to spend £12½ million; next year, £16 million, and in the year after that, £18 million. At the same time, we are concerned about the standard of the design of the homes, and have set up a specialist housing directorate of professional staff to design houses for all three Services. A special study is also being made of industrialised and prefabricated methods of building houses, and we hope that those, too, will, in due course, add to the numbers built.
  Sir Eric Errington: Would the Parliamentary Secretary be good enough to state the number of houses that will be built during the next three years for this increased expenditure?
  Miss Lee: Yes, certainly—in due course. In fact, I shall have great pleasure in giving the House the figures of houses to be built in the next three years, and those built in the last three years and the last 13 years—
  Sir E. Errington: Do not give too much.
  Miss Lee: The important point is that the Bill proposes a three-year extension of the Act, but hon. Members will be interested to know that there is a rolling three-year programme of expenditure. The total for the current year and the next two succeeding years is £47 million. This expenditure includes the amount needed for some houses being built on the general Vote, as well as the £45 million set aside in the Bill. The fact that this is a rolling programme of expenditure is very important. It would be all wrong to say that we were embarking on a three-year building programme for the Services that was to run down at the end of the three years.
  From the sums I have quoted, it will be seen that the plan is not to reduce the number of houses built, but to phase it so that we are increasing the number. Even now, discussions are going on with the Treasury in order to decide what it would be reasonable to spend in a fourth year. That means that at any given time the Ministry, which is now responsible for building homes for our Service men, will be able to plan fully three years ahead and will see how much money will be available. I know that it has been argued that it would be better to have a longer period, but such an argument does not have a great deal of substance provided that, at any given time, we are able to plan fully three years ahead.
  The hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington) asked for figures, and here they are. We hope to build, in the next three years over 12,000 houses with this loan money, as well as another 3,000 financed under the normal Ministry Vote. The programme is still building up, and we expect that from next year onwards we shall obtain a completion rate of about 5,000 homes a year. We cannot be exact—
  Dame Joan Vickers: Can the hon. Lady break down that figure into how many homes are to be provided for Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force personnel?
  Miss Lee: I have the figures relating to the three Services for the past 16 years, but I shall have to ask my right hon. Friend to give the hon. Lady the information she seeks when he winds up the debate.
  The immediate and important point is that we are hoping to build 5,000 houses a year, and we will certainly not fall far short of that figure. This will still not satisfy the demand. It is not possible to get a precise figure, but it is probable that, on the basis of the present entitlement, 40,000 new homes are required.
  We shall, however, be making more progress than was made in the previous three years—or for that matter, in any like period in the post-war years. Hon. Members might be interested in the following break-down. Between 1962 and 1965—the last three years of the previous Administration—under 10,000 houses were built—the exact figure is 9,092. It will, therefore, be seen that our proposal for the present year and the two following years is a considerable increase on that figure.
  There are a few minor changes in the Bill, but they do not, of course, affect the principle. The loan money will be issued direct to the Ministry of Public Building and Works—this is simply to tidy up the present arrangement by which the money has to go through Ministry of Defence Votes—but repayment and interest will continue to be made from the Ministry of Defence Votes, since once the homes have been built, they are handed over to the Ministry of Defence and remain on its charge.
  Although the purpose of the Bill is to provide finance for only a very small part of the Government's housing programme, it is, nevertheless, an assurance that the Government are determined to better the lot of the Service man. It will be an encouragement to those Service families which have either no quarters at all or live in sub-standard quarters. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence attaches considerable importance to that.
  I think that in my first few weeks in the Ministry of Public Building and Works I saw both the best and the worst that has been done in the country for our Service personnel. For instance, I was present at the opening of the Queen
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  Elizabeth Barracks for the Women's Royal Army Corps at Guildford. For both officers and other ranks, this accommodation is superb. It is comfortable, it is delightful, it is contemporary—it is the kind of accommodation that any educated young woman of today could feel pretty well content with. I was very much impressed with it.
  I was not only very much impressed by it, but comforted, because my other early experience in this Ministry was to visit Knightsbridge Barracks. Although that is a barracks, it has accommodation for some married families. I can tell the House that I was angry, I was embarrassed, I was ashamed when I saw the conditions in which married families were living right in the heart of London.
  That is why, although I do not want to labour the point, I must repeat that I was not convinced by the arguments advanced in those earlier debates, and subsequently, that the money allocated and the materials then available for this purpose had not been fully used because of the uncertainty involved in the movement of troops. Knightsbridge Barracks are not moved every other day. They are there. We knew that these were permanent quarters. I went into rooms where the walls were running with water and where the children had all to be cooped up together in one small space.
  I have a great deal of material here. I do not want to use it. I want merely to say that nothing could be worse for the Armed Forces than a discontented and worried mother without proper accommodation for herself and for her children. I hope that some of the quarters I have seen were the exceptionally bad ones, and that I can take it for granted from reports that reach me that, although roughly 40,000 homes have been provided since the end of the war—33,000 under the Acts we are now discussing—the other 20,000 which make up our rough total of 60,000 contain quite a number that have been reconditioned and, therefore, provide fairly normal accommodation.
  However, I do not think that we should blind ourselves to the fact that among those 20,000 there are far too many which are pre-war slums. In addition to the 60,000 homes we now have, which comprise 14,000 officers' quarters and 46,000 other ranks' quarters, we

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  require at least another 40,000 before we can feel that we have got the number necessary to meet the needs in this island.
  I hope that the Bill will encourage Service men to feel that they are getting a better deal than ever before and that the rate of building has been stepped up. I do not think that they would want me to go into any elaborate argument about costs and income rates, whether we pay by loan or whether we pay by capital charges. I think that their attitude will be—"Cut the cackle and come to the kisses. How many houses are in this?" Under the Bill we propose to build roughly 5,000 houses in each of the next three years. It will be the Government's pleasure, if they can, to build even more than that.
  I commend the Bill to the House, because it shows that the Service man is being given a higher priority where he has a wife and children in his care than ever he has been given before.
  Sir E. Errington: Can the hon. Lady tell the House what proportion of the married quarters are built under the loan scheme and what proportion is built from other sources?
  Miss Lee: Thirty-three thousand have been built under the loan scheme since the end of the war. The figure of 40,000 I gave as the number built since the end of the war included other houses not built under the loan scheme, but by direct capital grant.
  Captain Walter ElliotThe Bill is to provide
  "housing accommodation … for married persons serving in, or employed in connection with, the armed forces".
  A vast number of men are employed in connection with the Armed Forces The hon. Lady referred only to Service men. Can she tell us the proportion of houses which will go to Service men and the proportion which will go to those employed in connection with the Services?
  Miss Lee: No, but I am sure that, if the figures have been broken down in the Ministry in greater detail than those I have already given, my right hon. Friend the Minister, when he winds up, will be very pleased to tell the House those figures. Those figures are not in my immediate possession.
  7.4 p.m.
  Mr. James Ramsden: As the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary said, the Bill brings under review the whole problem of providing enough married quarters for Service families, in particular, in the United Kingdom. As she told us, it is proposed to add £45 million to the total funds available on loan and to extend the term for which those loans are available by a further three years up to the end of 1968.
  I intend to discuss a little later how far what is proposed in the Bill makes an adequate contribution to the problem of housing Service families. What is quite clear is that, had they been left to themselves and by themselves, hon. Members opposite would not have introduced the Bill. It would not have occurred to them to bring it forward. There was nothing about it in the Gracious Speech.
  The Minister of Public Building and Works (Mr. Charles Pannell): This is minor legislation.
  Mr. Ramsden: The right hon. Gentleman says that this is only minor legislation. I do not think that any Service family without a house could possibly agree with him about that. This is legislation to provide a very substantial sum of money to meet a very substantial need. Because there was no mention of it in the Gracious Speech, my right hon. and hon. Friends noticed the omission and at the earliest opportunity we had of asking the right hon. Gentleman about his Department's policy we asked him what his intentions were about the renewal of the Bill.
  It appeared from what the right hon. Gentleman then said—
  Mr. C. Pannell: When did I say it?
  Mr. Ramsden: —that he had not made up his mind about whether any renewal of this legislation was necessary.
  Mr. Pannell: When did I say it?
  Mr. Ramsden: The hon. Gentleman was unable to say whether or not—
  Mr. Pannell: When did I say anything like that in the House?
  Mr. Ramsden: The right hon. Gentleman need not get too impatient.
  Mr. Pannell: I am not.
  Mr. Ramsden: We put the question to him.
  Mr. Pannell: When?
  Mr. Ramsden: On the first Monday that Questions were taken in the Session. We had a temporising reply. I will say no more than that.
  Miss Jennie Lee: Perhaps I could clear up the point that the right hon. Gentleman is now making.
  Mr. Ramsden: No. We did not interrupt the hon. Lady, except at the end.
  Miss Lee: This is on a point of clarification.
  Mr. Ramsden: I want to develop my case. Pressure was exerted by my hon. Friends, and their vigilance for the interest of Service men and their families had a good deal to do with the Bill being brought forward. We now have the Bill. If I may hazard a guess at the reason for the initial delay, it was that possibly it was expected that the Government's legislative programme would be unduly crowded with some of the more controversial elements of Socialist legislation which we have been promised but which have not yet been forthcoming.
  Because of unforeseen delays in bringing forward those Bills, which were promised in the Gracious Speech, there is now more time and it has—I am glad that it has—commended itself to the right hon. Gentleman and to the Government to bring forward the Bill. I agree with the hon. Lady that it is a sensible Bill. It is one that I certainly would not advise my hon. Friends to oppose. However, I think that it is right, as the House has time, that we should spend an hour or two in discussing what is for the Services, as the hon. Lady has said, a most important and vital problem.
  The Under-Secretary of State fox Defence for the Army (Mr. G. W. Reynolds): Is not the right hon. Gentleman fully aware that one of the reasons why it could not be said for certain what the exact position about the Bill would be is that he himself, in the office he held in the last Parliament, failed to convince his Ministerial colleagues that such legislation was necessary? We had to
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  start from scratch. My right hon. Friends holding other Government posts are more amenable to this type of legislation than his right hon. Friends were when they were in office.
  Mr. Ramsden: In view of the very minor points on which the Bill differs from any previous legislation, I cannot believe that it has taken the Labour Party from last November to now to get the Bill ready. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's point carries much substance.
  This is a question which is absolutely fundamental to the well-being of our Armed Services in several ways. It is fundamental, in the first place, to recruiting. More than once, standing at that Box, I have said that there is no single factor more important to the success of recruiting in any of the three Services than a satisfactory state of married accommodation for the families. I have been very glad to see recently that the picture of recruiting as it is going now is satisfactory. We are all pleased about that, but it is clear that two things are happening.
  First, the Services are tending to take on fewer married recruits, that is, fewer men actually married at present. Secondly, they are taking in—and to this is attributable in large measure the recent improvement in the figures—a larger number than heretofore of 17-yearolds, the younger men. Those two things are happening now, and equally, I believe, two things will happen in the future.
  The present bulge in the age-groups coming forward into eligibility for recruiting will die away and the Services may have to reconsider their policy about recruitment of married men. Secondly, the 17-year-olds who have recently been taken in in fairly large numbers will face the decision whether to re-engage in three or four years, at about the same time as they will, in the normal course of events, be facing the equally important decision on whether or not to get married. Whether they do decide to re-engage, and whether the rate of re-engagement is satisfactory for the Services to keep up their numbers will depend in large measure on the Government's success in providing a sufficient number of married quarters.

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  There is another point here which is not often made and which, though true, may be surprising at first sight. A satisfactory state of Service housing is a big factor in assuring full, flexible and effective use of Service units in their deployment around the world on operational commitments. One cannot, in conscience, take a unit from an unsatisfactory family station and, in the normal course of its rotation round the world, move it to another bad one. If this has to happen, the consequences for morale will be bad.
  The posting of our units round the world is not an easy business. It has been discharged with notable skill and efficacy by the staff responsible during the past year in very difficult conditions, and I really need say no more about it than that the more bad family stations there are, whether in this country or overseas, the more difficult will it be for the staffs concerned to rotate units to the best advantage and secure the best operational use of the manpower and units which we have available. There is no doubt or disagreement between us and the party opposite, therefore, about the key importance of this problem of service housing.
  The hon. Lady twitted my hon. Friends and myself about Knightsbridge Barracks. I say only this in reply, that the planning of the whole concept of Knightsbridge, to which she rightly attached importance, was a long, complex and difficult business, as she knows. As the Minister himself will agree, an outstandingly good design was produced. I was more than relieved when I learned that the right hon. Gentleman had resisted the suggestion from his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) that the project should be reviewed and that it had been decided not to abandon it. It would have been a very grave blow to the Services had that decision been taken.
  I wish now to remind the right hon. Gentleman and the House of a little of the background to the present position out of which has arisen the responsibility of his Ministry for the housing of Service families. In the old days, until April, 1963, tie Services had their own works departments, and very efficient they were. The right hon. Gentleman has in a leading and responsible position in his
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  Ministry Sir Donald Gibson, who was a leading light in the Army Works Department in the old days and to whom is due a great deal of the imaginative innovations in the design of married quarters and other Service buildings of which the benefits are being felt today.
  When the change was made, and responsibility was placed on the right hon. Gentleman's Ministry, it was done for good reasons connected with the policy of giving to his Ministry an element of domestic construction for which it would be directly responsible, in other words, some building to do on its own for itself, so that it would be enabled to be in some sense a pioneer for the rest of the construction industry, pointing the way and setting a good example.
  I think that the change was, therefore, one which could be justified, but, inevitably, there was some concern among the Services that, when responsibility for their own building was taken away and put under a different roof, their interests might not be as efficiently served as when they had sole responsibility in their own hands.
  My right hon. Friends did a great deal and worked very hard to ensure that those apprehensions were groundless, and I think that they succeeded in demonstrating that they were. They had, perhaps, two advantages over right hon. and hon. Members opposite, one that the Minister occupying the right hon. Gentleman's position, Mr. Geoffrey Rippon, was in the Cabinet at the time, the other that the Parliamentary Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharpies), had a wide background of Service knowledge himself and could talk to members of the Services in their own language.
  Mr. C. Pannell: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that they will not understand us?
  Mr. Ramsden: They were both at great pains not only to take a great interest, but to make perfectly clear to members of the Services that they were taking great trouble and interest, and in this they were very well supported by their officials.
  I do not make too much of this, or of the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is not in the Cabinet. He made a very good joke when the point was raised with

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  him at Question Time, saying that he would not have time, among his many duties, had he even been invited. But the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends are absolutely right to take every opportunity to get about among the Services, to visit Service stations, to talk to people and to hear what they have to say. I hope that they are doing so.
  The hon. Lady said that she went to the opening of the W.R.A.C. barracks at Guildford. I am very glad that she did. I hope that she and the right hon. Gentleman will, not just on official occasions of this kind, but, so to speak, on undress occasions, talk to commanding officers and to everyone concerned. Talking to commanding officers, one will find that at the root of almost every problem concerning discipline or welfare is the question of the separation of a husband from his wife and family. So I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give great attention to this matter.
  I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman one or two questions about the Bill. I should like him to explain—his hon. Friend has already said a little—the need and justification for the Bill. I put the question seriously because, frankly, I am puzzled about it. Certainly, we want the Bill, but I should like to be enlightened about this. It has been said, and it is accepted, that if we do not have the Bill it would still be possible to find the money for a programme of married quarters building from the Votes, and the Bill says that what is spent out of the loan shall not exceed the yearly provision made by Parliament in the Vote.
  It would be interesting to know the real value of this method of financing by loan. I suspect that the answer is that when funds of this kind have the approval of the House and have been given effect to by Statute, it cannot then be said in any yearly review of future expenditure that the money is not available for the purpose for which the Ministry might want it. I take it that to the extent that we have passed an Act making these funds available the hand of the right hon. Gentleman is strengthened under each yearly review of the defence budget and that it increases the certainty with which he seeks confirmation of his yearly programme. I believe this to be true, and
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  I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will either confirm or deny it.
  Whatever the answer is, this raises another, more fundamental question. Ought this kind of expenditure—on Service housing, or, for that matter, on the education of service families—to be reviewed year by year as part of the defence budget? Does it properly belong in the defence budget? Is it right that the claims of this type of expenditure should have to compete when the Government are making their yearly settlement of the percentage of the national income which they think they ought to devote to defence? Is it right that married quarters should have to compete with tanks, guns, ships and other equipment? After all, these houses are part of the national stock of houses and will be a national asset whatever happens to the size of the Armed Forces. If soldiers and their families do not live in them, they will be lived in by somebody.
  I should like the right hon. Gentleman's view on whether this yearly programme about which the hon. Lady has told us should be seen in relation to the whole building effort, and the need for it weighed against the need for other types of social building—houses, schools and hospitals—and whether that would not be a more logical situation than the claims of these projects having to compete in the annual settlement of the defence budget with ships, guns and other Service equipment of a more martial kind. I should like to know what the Government think about it.
  Mr. Charles Loughlin: There is great validity in the right hon. Gentleman's argument. I am rather ignorant of what goes on in this matter. Can he tell me how long he has held this view and whether, in the past, he attempted to have it established in his own Government? Instead of waiting for us to do it, why did he not attempt to get it done earlier?
  Mr. Ramsden: The hon. Gentleman is right. What I am calling in question is long-established practice. I do not attempt to deny that. However, I think that it is a question which ought to be thought about, particularly at a time when the national resources available for defence are under pressure, as they admittedly are today.

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  Does the right hon. Gentleman really think that the £45 million over the next three years is enough? On the face of it, it does not appear to be enough. We know that the money remaining from previous Acts is very nearly exhausted. We also know the programme for the next three years, partly because the hon. Lady announced it, but even more so because I announced it last year myself on the first day of the defence debate. I said that for next year Mr. Rippon had agreed a programme of £16 million and the year after £18 million, a total of £34 million. Assuming that for the year after that, which the hon. Lady told us was not yet decided, the Government wish to spend not less than £18 million—I do not think that they would wish to appear to do any worse than Mr. Rippon had planned to do—that comes to £52 million as against the £45 million over the three years proposed in the Bill. So, on the face of it, it does not look as though the Bill goes far enough.
  I also wonder why it is proposed to extend the term of the loan for only three years. Previous Acts have made a five-year extension. I do not suppose that anybody believes that the need for a high rate of married quarters building will have disappeared at the end of three years, and I should have thought that a five-year term would have been much more appropriate. Although we welcome the Bill, it does not seem to represent the kind of bold reaffirmation of the right hon. Gentleman's intention to tackle and master the problem of Service accommodation which I thought he would wish the Bill to be and to which the programme established by Mr. Rippon and announced by the previous Government pointed the way.
  Mr. C. Pannell: The right hon. Gentleman asked me a question and then went on, from a completely false premise, to pose an argument. He asked whether this was enough. The answer is that in the next three years it is double what it was in the last three years. I do not know whether that is boldness or not, but the right hon. Gentleman had better put up an alibi for his own performance before he attacks ours.
  Mr. Ramsden: The right hon. Gentleman misses the point. I am judging the amount of money proposed in the Bill
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  in relation to the programme announced by the previous Government and confirmed by the hon. Lady. It is in relation to the amount of building to be done over the period that we must judge the amount of money being made available in the Bill. On a simple calculation involving no more than adding together the three yearly figures, it does not look as though the right hon. Gentleman is asking for enough.
  The hon. Lady did not refer to Clause 4, but it changes what has appeared in previous Statutes of this kind. Instead of saying that the rate of interest on the repayment of this loan shall be what is appropriate, it says that it shall be the rate as determined by the Treasury. Why is that altered provision being made? Is there any significance in it?
  I know that the right hon. Gentleman will be concerned to get value for money out of this building programme. We should like to hear more about his detailed plans. He knows, better than I do, that when building resources in the country generally are at full stretch—and it is a good thing that they should be—there is upward pressure on prices and the only way out of the dilemma is to improve productivity. I know that that is the intention of the Government, as it was the intention of their predecessors. But we should like to hear more details about how the right hon. Gentleman plans to bring it about.
  For example, one element in the building of married quarters must be the overheads of his Ministry. I do not know how they rate in the scale of costs or how they compare with building overheads in construction firms outside. Earlier this Session, I asked the right hon. Gentleman what he was doing to bring about the rationalisation and contraction in the number of staff in the Ministry which was looked to when the reorganisation of the Service Departments was first implemented. He was not able to give me a full answer then but I hope that he has given further study to the problem and will tell us more tonight. It is important to get the overheads as low as possible.
  Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will also tell us to what extent in the building for which he is responsible he is employing new and industrialised techniques.
  Miss Jennie Lee: Two thousand houses.
  Mr. Ramsden: The hon. Lady says that 2,000 houses are involved. We shall be obliged for more details. I should like, in passing, to mention two ancillary ways of alleviating the shortage of married quarters. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) was very anxious to encourage housing associations and it was suggested to the last Government that the Services might have housing associations of their own to help provide accommodation for Service families. It was suggested that the S.S.A.F.A. might help in their organisation. I believe that one has been in existence for the Navy in Portsmouth for some time. Has this additional method of providing married accommodation been examined further? If so, what was the outcome?
  I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will also tell us something about approved hirings. When married quarters are not available, hirings are an excellent means of finding homes for Service families and keeping them together. I have heard, however, that, as a result of the introduction of the Protection from Eviction Act, there is some anxiety in garrison towns as to the position when a house is let by a Service man temporarily for a hiring when he goes with his family on a tour of duty overseas. It would be of help if the right hon. Gentleman would give us some reassurance on that point.
  We welcome the Bill in so far as it measures up to the immense problem that confronts the Government. Thanks to the measures taken by Mr. Rippon and the programme which he inaugurated, the Government are embarking on their responsibilities on a good wicket. They have a programme which gives real possibilities of improving standards and productivity and, providing that they take full advantage of this opportunity, they can be assured of our full support.
  7.35 p.m.
  Sir Eric Errington: I dislike the idea of this being in any sense a party political occasion. [Interruption.] I hope that the Minister will not keep on interrupting from a sedentary position. My reason for hoping that it will not be party political is that everyone is agreed that this is something that wants doing and wants doing well and I am bound
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  to say that, as far as my knowledge goes, it is now being done extremely badly.
  The expectations were considerable. Recently, Answers to Questions about the Army stated that, in 1964–65, the building programme was for 1,700 houses; for 1965–66, it was 2,400; and for 1966–67 it was to be 2,100. Until we get the breakdown between the Services it is difficult to know exactly what the position of the Army is, but I presume that these houses are for the most part the subject of loans of the type we are discussing in this Bill.
  How much of the expected building has been achieved? I make no apology in saying that this is largely a constituency speech, though not entirely so. I was very disturbed to find in my constituency that many fewer quarters had been built than expected and for which finance had been provided. In these circumstances, it would appear that a substantial sum of money voted in previous years has been unexpended. We should be told about it. It is no good the House voting large sums of money, by way of loans or otherwise, unless we know what is being done about it. I understand that £45 million is to be spent on 15,000 houses over three years. That means over £3,000 per house.
  No doubt I will be told that ground has to be bought, but any local council, building a much better type of house—I say that quite advisedly, because I shall refer to some of the difficulties—would be shocked to hear of such substantial amounts of money being spent. We should know why it is that it costs £3,000 to build each unit of married quarters. I do not know whether they be flats or houses, but it is a very substantial sum of money and we should have fuller information. There is substantial delay in the building of these houses, with the consequence of increased costs, both of materials and wages.
  If the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary would like to visit Aldershot, we would be delighted to show her the houses about whose conditions I intend to give some details. Knightsbridge Barracks is not the worst place, because it has been in existence for some time while these Aldershot houses are new and were built by the Ministry of Public Building and Works.
  Perhaps I ought strictly not to mention the fact that two of the sergeants'

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  messes collapsed during the course of construction. The ugliness of the layout of the buildings is shocking. I thought that when the Ministry of Public Building and Works came along, an artistic sense, instead of that of the brutal and licentious soldiery, might become clearer and more marked, but instead there are sheets of concrete which are now getting to that ugly, wet, stained stage which makes the whole thing unrelievedly gloomy. I hope that something will be done about that, which is why I invite the Minister as well as the Parliamentary Secretary to come and see.
  The occupants of 12 houses had to be removed so that the houses could be partially reconstructed. At one time, the Service tenants had to go into new, hardly finished houses temporarily so that houses which had been supposed to be completed by the builders could be properly repaired. If that had happened to a private builder, or to an architect responsible to a private builder, there would have been a considerable fuss, and rightly so. Apparently, bad building is not the monopoly of a private builder.
  Let us now consider the Talavera Estate, Aldershot, a very worthy name and, one would have thought, a very worthy place. My information is that a wet, grey-green mould which spreads over walls and ceilings, rots fabrics, eats holes in clothes and spoils food is creeping over the interior of the new Army houses and flats on this estate. Wives tired of the ceaseless battle to wipe, scrape and scour it away are nearing the end of their patience. It is said that the experts are baffled. They ought to be debaffled, if there is such a word, as soon as possible, and it is the job of the Ministry to see that they are. One wretched soldier whose responsibility it is to keep his uniform in order has to have a moth-proof bag to keep it wearable and free from mould.
  Do not believe that the matter ends there, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The experts—I do not know whether they were employed by the contractor or the Ministry—treated part of the walls with two chemical substances and redecorated them with anti-mould paint. This was successful within its limits, but, unfortunately, where the paint was not and where the woodwork was there the mould went. That is not a very satisfactory state of
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  affairs. Speaking with the studied moderation of the Ministry, which is represented from top to bottom in the Ministry, a representative said that this was "excessive condensation", but nothing was said about how that was being dealt with except the rather mystic words, "We are looking into it". It would have been more accurate to say, "We are looking at it—and doing nothing."
  The next bright idea of the experts, who are still puzzled, was to fit fan ventilators, which were not more effective than the inadequate treatment with chemicals to prevent the mould. This for the people whom the Parliamentary Secretary has described as worthy of the very best we can give. They have gas heating, but only downstairs, and gas heating is the most expensive form of heating. In the cold months it costs £11 or £12 a month, and then only for downstairs.
  These worthy people are doing their best to survive the attacks of the mould and the condensation, but they cannot achieve anything because the mould is upstairs where there is no proper system of heating. Paraffin stoves have to be used because they cannot afford the more expensive gas heating arrangements. These Service wives are very good and try to keep the house hot while opening the windows to get rid of the condensation, but this is obviously beyond their capacity. This is something which should have immediate attention.
  Some of the roofs have been very bad Within the last week a representative of the Ministry said:
  "There have been no roof leaks as such. There was a defect in the gas warm air heating system caused by a faulty connection where the exhaust pipe meets the roof section This was causing vapour to seep through into the roof section. This faulty connection has now been put right by the contractors."
  This is a sorry story for the up-to-date place which we call Aldershot, the home of the British Army. Is this the sort of condition of affairs which we are to allow for people with families entering the Army and looking on it as a career? They must have a chance of satisfactory accommodation.
  The problem is particularly difficult because it is almost impossible to find civilian accommodation. I am sorry that the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army is not here, because I have

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  had one or two letters already which have shown that people leaving the Army cannot find civilian accommodation. It is only natural that the Army should want, when it is short, the accommodation for personnel coming from abroad or elsewhere, but the ex-Service families who have to leave the accommodation and who are called illegal occupants—which is rather a shame—find it impossible to get alternative accommodation.
  There is even a more important consideration. There is the difficulty of finding accommodation for wives who are left behind when their husbands are posted overseas and the accommodation is wanted for other people posted to the district. I wonder whether the Minister would consider the possibility of pointing out to local authorities the importance of providing accommodation in these cases. if they could help—and they are very helpful in many respects—it would ease some of the pressure caused by the fact that people leave the Army and have nowhere to go. Some years ago the former Administration wrote to local authorities inviting them to help in any way they could.
  I sincerely hope—and I do not say this from a party political angle—that the present Government will improve on the present buildings. There appears a lack of knowledge about elementary things, such as how much buildings cost and how well they are built. I hope that my words tonight will lead to some improvement.
  7.51 p.m.
  Mr. Charles Loughlin: I echo the sentiment expressed by the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington) that this matter should be entirely devoid of party politics. That should be underlined three or four times.
  Unfortunately the right hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden), in opening the debate for the Opposition, began on a party political note. He attempted not only to make party political propaganda out of this issue, but was a little mischievous in suggesting that, because my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary reminded him of the contents of the Gracious Speech and drew his atten-
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  tion to the fact that the words "minor legislation" were used in it, we considered that the welfare of the Armed Forces was a minor matter.
  The right hon. Gentleman entirely failed in his initial attempt to drape himself with real initiative in prodding this lazy and slothful Administration into doing something along the lines we are suggesting today. Not only was he badly briefed; he did not remember the date on which he put the Question down. He was not even able to say in substantiation of his claim, "On such and such a day I tabled a Question to the Minister and as a consequence the Bill was produced".
  Mr. Ramsden: I said, the first Monday in the Session.
  Mr. Loughlin: If I were making a claim of that kind, I should have given the date so that it could be verified.
  What amazes me is this. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say, "We have certain reservations about the Bill. We think that the matter might have been dealt with differently. More money might have been forthcoming. But we welcome the Bill. "If, as I believe, it is important now to do what the Bill proposes, why did not he do it when he had the opportunity? We get a little tired of this mock indignation about the slothfulness of an Administration which has been in office for three months when right hon. Gentlemen opposite had 13 years in which to do all the things, which they say we should do in three months, and failed to do them. It is sheer political hypocrisy for right hon. and hon. Members opposite to talk in these terms; and, frankly, the public know it.
  The provision of houses for Army personnel, whether they be officers or in the ranks, should be a first priority. I do not know whether the cost should come within the defence lump sum. I do not know whether it should be lumped with tanks and guns. But if we want Army personnel to lead a decent, human life, they are entitled to think that accommodation will be made available for them because they are charged with the responsibility of defending this nation. We have a responsibility to ensure that every possible welfare service is provided for them. I do not care how

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  the provision is made. I do not care whether it comes within the province of the Armed Forces or of the Ministry of Public Building and Works. I believe that it would be better in the hands of the Ministry of Public Building and Works.
  There has been criticism of the buildings erected in Aldershot. I admire the hon. Member for Aldershot for the trouble to which he has gone to obtain information about the building which he mentioned. When I say "building", I mean the sergeants' mess and the other buildings to which the hon. Gentleman referred. I am not too sure about this matter and I do not want to appear to have knowledge which obviously I do not have, but the hon. Gentleman referred to private contractors and the Ministry of Public Building and Works. Am I to understand that these buildings were erected by private contractors or by direct building?
  Sir E. Errington: I am not certain of the exact arrangements. However, my point was that the ordinary person who has a house built is entitled to complain, and does complain, if it is not satisfactory. There have been complaints by the tenants of the buildings which I mentioned, but as far as I know no complaint has been made by the Ministry.
  Mr. Loughlin: There is a lot of bad building going on, and all sorts of people suffer from it. The hon. Gentleman may be aware that I was the victim of some of this type of building. Fortunately, I knew what to do. I should have thought that if buildings in the state which the hon. Gentleman described were built by private contractors, the Ministry would have some method of dealing with those contractors. If that power has not existed, in any future contracts which are issued for this type of building I ask my right hon. Friend to ensure that there is every conceivable opportunity—[interruption.] I will wait for my right hon. Friend to finish his conversation. I appreciate that he has to be given information. I was not being clever.
  I will repeat briefly the request which I was putting to my right hon. Friend. The hon. Member has referred to some shocking building at Aldershot. He re-
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  ferred to the fact that the sergeants' mess had collapsed twice and that there were considerable defects in certain houses which had been constructed. It is not clear whether they were constructed by a direct building department or by private contractors. I should have thought that if they were built by private contractors, the Ministry would have the opportunity to ensure that the contractors did the right thing in building. If the Ministry does not have that power, my request to the Minister is that in any future contracts that he puts out to private contractors, such conditions will be laid upon the builder that there cannot possibly be a repetition of this kind of thing.
  Mr. C. Pannell: I understand that these buildings were built by private contractors. The defects showed up within the guarantee period and money is being withheld.
  Mr. Loughlin: It is gratifying to know that. I want, however, to develop the point a little further. I know that one cannot absolutely guarantee that any building contractor will produce the best quality work, but I suggest to my right hon. Friend, in view of what he has said, that he should ensure that these private contractors will in no circumstances receive further contracts from his Department.
  I wish to refer to the number of houses which are to be provided for the sum of £45 million. I am not too sure that we are setting our target high enough at 15,000 houses. We should try to stretch it a little more. We should aim at seeing that as many as possible of the Service personnel can have the opportunity of having their wives with them, whether in this country or overseas. The £45 million is not such an exaggerated figure as the hon. Member for Aldershot thought.
  Sir E. Errington: I suppose that the cost of most council houses which are built nowadays is between £2,000 and £2,500. My point was that in this case there seems to be an average of £3,000.
  Mr. Loughlin: I appreciate the point made by the hon. Member, but there may well be some flats included in the figure of £45 million.
  Sir E. Errington: They are more expensive.
  Mr. Loughlin: They are substantially more costly to build than orthodox houses. The average council house is of the two-or three-bedroom type with a few refinements. I should, however, qualify that remark, because some really beautiful council houses are being built, although a lot of them are the basic forms of housing with refinements absent rather than present. I should think that the figure of £45 million includes houses for officers as well as for other ranks. I know that one can make a lot of qualifications about this, but I would argue that the officers should be content with the same type of accommodation as the men.
  Sir E. Errington: Nobody is content. That is the point.
  Mr. Loughlin: I agree with the hon. Member. Strangely, we agree on most things. The figure of £45 million will, however, include varying types of houses larger than the normal council house and on balance I should have thought that an average of £3,000 would be a fairly reasonable figure.
  I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will take this part of his duties extremely seriously. I know that he takes all his duties seriously, but—and I hope that he will not mind my saying this—within his Department, with the overall responsibility which he has, there might be a slight tendency for this to be almost an adjunct to some of the duties which he has to perform.
  I believe that this responsibility is now in the right quarter, as it has been for about three years, but I urge upon my right hon. Friend the need to accept the full seriousness of this part of his responsibility. We can easily fail in our duty to the Service personnel and it will only be by extra attention and vigilance that we give to our Service personnel the conditions to which they are entitled by virtue of the function which they perform in society.
  8.7 p.m.
  Captain Walter Elliot: I wondered whether I should preface my remarks by saying that I hope they will be non-party or violently party. The hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) is a bit thin-skinned. We all agree that this is a non-party matter, and surely we will not be inhibited
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  from trying to get something more or something different. My recollection is that in the last Parliament the hon. Member was never backward in applying that principle when we were sitting on the benches opposite.
  I entirely agree with hon. Members that, basically, this is not a party issue. Certainly, I welcome the Bill. Since 1951 there has been an enormous increase in house building, and it is right that the Services should share in the increase in building capacity. I agree, however, with what has already been said from this side of the House. Why are we looking ahead only three years? The Parliamentary Secretary said that we need 40,000 houses for the Services, yet we are looking only three years ahead. I welcome the increase in numbers, but the last Act, I understand, involved a figure of £95 million and in that instance we looked ahead over a period of 15 years.
  Mr. C. Pannell: It is five years. We might as well get our terms right. The first of these Acts was introduced in 1949 and it has been renewed at five-yearly intervals. In effect the legislation lapses. It will lapse this time, hence the Bill. Each time it has been five years.
  Captain Elliot: I understand that, but it does not invalidate my point about looking further ahead than three years.
  It seems to me perfectly logical that the money should be transferred to the Votes of the Ministry of Public Building and Works, and I personally see no objection to that. My right hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden), speaking from our Front Bench, suggested that it should not be included in the Defence Votes. As I read the White Paper it is not going to be. I see that the Minister agrees with that, and I am very glad, because I think that this is absolutely right.
  I would ask him not to underestimate this problem of the allocation of resources between the Services. I imagine there will be a battle here, not only a battle between the Services but probably between the categories of men and women, both those in uniform and those working for the Services. The hon. Lady referred only to Service men. I asked her about this and she said the Minister would refer

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  to it. The Bill does apply to those employed in connection with the Services and there are many hundreds of thousands of them.
  From my experience when I was in uniform for a good many years I could say that it seemed to rankle—I may have got the wrong impression—that men and women not in uniform seemed to live in quite well-constructed, sometimes very big, houses, while the houses which were available for uniformed personnel were very much inferior. I think that times have probably changed since then, but I am sure that there will be problems there and I ask the Minister not to underestimate them.
  Several hon. Members referred to both home and overseas. The White Paper seems to suggest that the building programme covers overseas as well as home. The Bill specifically speaks in Clause 1 of
  "moneys provided by Parliament for those years for the provision of approved housing accommodation in Great Britain for married persons serving in, or employed in connection with, the armed forces".
  I wonder whether the Minister would care to confirm one way or the other which it is, because there are, as we know, a large number of Service men and civilians employed by the Services serving overseas, and it is just as important that they are properly housed as it is for people at home to be.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington) mentioned—although he may not have used the word—the question of entitlement. I would ask the Minister to look into that very carefully. Problems do arise. I have known, for example, of a family with no means giving up their house in this country and going into a quarter in Malta; the husband was in a ship based there. In these days of mobility of the Armed Forces he is suddenly moved to the other end of the world, and the wife and family are no longer entitled to a quarter on that station and have to come back to this country. That not only thoroughly upsets her, but it thoroughly upsets the morale of the men in the Forces.
  Mr. C. Pannell: I will deal with that straight away. The Bill refers to quarters in this country. The sentiments expressed by the hon. and gallant Gentleman are
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  unexceptionable, and we can agree with them, but they really ought not to be directed to me. They really must be directed to the appropriate Minister for the Navy or Army as the case may be.
  Captain Elliot: I am glad the Minister has cleared up that point, but, again, I do not think it destroys the substance of what I have said.
  Mr. Pannell: No.
  Captain Elliot: It seems to me that if this remains under different Ministers that is a complication which might well be looked at and considered.
  Mr. Richard Sharples: I think we want to be quite clear over this question. The Minister has responsibility for the construction of married quarters overseas as well, although not under the terms of this Bill. I think that must be corrected.
  Mr. Pannell: I do not think there is any doubt about it. Of course, in effect, the clients are the Services, as the hon. Gentleman knows. I am very much in the position of a building contractor. It does seem to me that the message is for the Armed Forces. I will use all the influence I can to pass it on, but the message is at the moment being put in the wrong letter box.
  Captain Elliot: Perhaps this point has been laboured enough, but I think it has shown that there is something here which might create some difficulties.
  Naturally, we on this side of the House, welcome this increase in the sum of money by £45 million over three years. There is no argument about that, but again I would ask the Minister, as I am sure he will because he is like that, to fight for the necessary resources for the Services to have their houses. We all know that building resources are strained to the limit, and it is going to be a struggle, even if the money is there, to get houses up. He will have all my support, as far as I am concerned, as, I am sure, he will have that of my hon. Friends, to see that the Services get their share.
  My final point arises out of paragraph 4 of the White Paper. I feel that, rather ominously, these houses are only going

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  to be provided if they are approved by the Treasury. Paragraph 4 says:
  "Further, the sum which may be appropriated in aid of the new Vote must not, without further Parliamentary authority, in the course of any financial year, exceed the sum shown in the Estimate …'.
  I must confess that I am not particularly expert in this machinery, but can we take it that if we are not going to get a longer term than three years building will not be held up—as it often is in the Services working on an annual budget—because the Estimates for that year are running out? Or, if they can go faster, that we can then get more money? I think that is an important point, because everyone concerned with the Services and the annual budget is driven mad repeatedly by the delays caused by those annual budgets.
  With those remarks I welcome this Bill, and I wish it all speed, and I hope, too, for more money over a longer period of time.
  8.18 p.m.
  Dame Joan Vickers: I am very glad to be able to take part in this debate, and I am going to concentrate most of my remarks on the application of the Bill to the naval services. First, I should like to say to the right hon. Gentleman that I think he is doing a great service by bringing forward this Bill tonight. The way in which this Bill is carded out will make the difference between heartbreak and happiness. It will bring a great deal of happiness to many people.
  I was worried about the change-over of this matter of housing to the Ministry of Public Building and Works from the Services themselves. I think that it is, perhaps, a little too early to judge the results of the transfer, but it does seem to me that the transfer to the right hon. Gentleman's Department, which has so many ramifications, was bound to cause some disquiet.
  Only the other day I happened to be in the Royal Marine Barracks, Stone-house, Devonport, and I really could not find out who was responsible for this or that. I have since put down a Question to him and I got some answer about the date of completion of the reconstruction. There were eight people in a room discussing plans. One seemed to come from Bristol, one from Plymouth, and so
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  on. I should like to be assured that there is proper co-operation in the question of dealing with this building.
  How is the programming done? Who decides whether so many houses will be built for the Navy, so many for the Army, and so many for the Royal Air Force? Do the Services state what they want done, and the numbers they require? Suppose, for example, there was an easy site for the Royal Air Force, and a more difficult one for the Navy, and it was possible to get on more quickly with the development of the R.A.F. site? Would it be possible to progress more quickly with the R.A.F. site so as to avoid having to stop building? As all three Services now come under the Ministry of Defence, there should be co-operation between the Services in programming.
  Is any consideration given to the type of house being built? Will the same type of house be built for the personnel of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Air Force in the United Kingdom? If so, will there be a possibility of interchange of houses between the Services? Sometimes an Army unit is moved overseas and the houses remain vacant for a considerable time, but they could be used to house naval personnel. Will the Services co-operate in the allocation of houses? Can the Minister say how many houses will be built in the next three years, for the Royal Navy, the Army, and the Royal Air Force? I ask that because I presume that the number has been settled for the coming three years.
  I hope that when the Minister replies he will break down the cost of building a house and building a flat. In previous debates on the subject I discovered that the Plymouth local authority could build a house for at least £100 less than the Admiralty Works Department was doing it. If the Minister can break down the cost of a house and a flat, we can get some idea of which is the most economic unit to build—a house or a flat and if it costs less than under Admiralty works.
  I am delighted to see the hon. Lady in the Chamber. I am not a feminist, but in what I regard as a rather domestic subject it is an advantage to have a woman dealing with housing. I hope that as a result of her appointment we shall get better designs than we have had in

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  the past, particularly in regard to kitchens and other domestic accommodation. Many things could be improved by a slightly feminine touch, and these improvements would be of great advantage.
  I know that barracks do not really come into this discussion, but the hon. Lady said that she had visited women's Army barracks. I hope that if she has time to do so she will visit H.M.S. "Dauntlesss", the home of the W.R.N.S., because this could do with considerable modernising.
  I suggest that the Navy housing should be dealt with on a different basis from that of the Army and the Air Force. The provision of houses for naval personnel is fairly new in the history of the Navy. Paragraph 72 of the Grigg Report said:
  "To the married man serving in the ranks, it is of the utmost importance that he should be provided with a quarter or hiring when he is posted to a new station. If this is lacking, the probability is that he will have to be separated from his family, with disastrous effects on his willingness to re-engage."
  The question of re-engagement is particularly important for the Navy, because recruitment is lagging behind that in the other two Services, and we are coming up to an important year when many people will be considering re-engagement. At the moment there are not enough Navy houses to go round, and I am sure that there will not be enough in the next three years and it is very important that men should be encouraged to re-engage for the Navy.
  Paragraph 74 of the Grigg Report referred to a lot of old and damp buildings with a "D" for demolition. How is this demolition getting on? Does the Minister think that any of these houses can be repaired sufficiently to be useful for the present time until we get more accommodation? Can the Minister also tell us what is the anticipated life of the houses now under the control of his Ministry? He has told us the number he will be building in future, but I should like to know what replacements will be needed for those that are getting old and perhaps not worth repairing. This information is necessary in calculating future housing needs. We must know how many will go out of action each year, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will consider this.
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  Is it possible under the provisions of the Bill for an individual to obtain a loan to build a house?
  Mr. C. Pannell: No.
  Dame Joan Vickers: Perhaps the money can be obtained under the Act which set up the housing corporations? Many Service personnel want to build their own homes.
  There is a great difference between naval housing and Army and Air Force housing. It is possible to put the Army and the Air Force on one estate, because usually the families move together. The Navy, however, is in a different position. In many cases naval husbands are away from some time and have to leave their wives and families behind.
  The plea I am making is not a new one. I have made this point before, and I should like it to be reconsidered.
  I dislike what I call cantonments of housing, particularly for the Navy, because on a Navy estate one cannot get any form of neighbourhood community. People move in and go out at different times. Mrs. Smith may in one house, and Mrs. Harris in the other. One comes in one month, and the other goes out. Wives need to live in a neighbourly community while their husbands are away. In other words, they need a neighbour whom they can contact and sometimes get to sit in with the children. As the wives are often separated from their husbands for long periods, they need this kind of neighbourly help.
  I have said before—and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will consider this—that we should provide certain local authorities, such as those of Plymouth and Portsmouth, with a certain sum of money and ask them to build houses for the Navy. They could do it more cheaply than is done by the Ministry, and naval personnel could be integrated in the existing housing estates. This would be of great advantage to the Navy.
  If the Parliamentary Secretary could come to my constituency I should be very pleased to show her the housing estate at St. Budeaux. As it is at the moment with people coming in and going fairly regularly there is no chance of creating tidy gardens, and one often sees the grass growing two or three feet high and it is most unsightly. There are no flowers, and very few trees. There is nobody to do the gardening. I hope that it will

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  be possible, therefore, for naval houses to have a type of small, perhaps paved, garden which does not need a lot of upkeep. There are plenty of such types. This would save a good deal of ground and it would be very advantageous to the appearance of the whole estate.
  Further, in order not only to save money but also to help individuals to feel more at home, I want to make a plea for the provision of unfurnished accommodation. Many of the young couples have their own furniture, and when they go into naval houses they have to have their furniture stored. When I raised this matter before I was told that this could not be done because a set pattern of furniture is provided and when it is moved marks are left on the wall. I suggest that since most families occupy these houses for approximately three years, when they leave the houses are due for some decoration—a brush of paint or some distemper. Therefore, it ought not to make any difference if they had different patterns of furniture. It would be more economical to these couples if they could use their own furniture, and it would make them feel more at home. I make this further plea for the provision of some unfurnished accommodation.
  I would also make one point about people who are employed in connection with the Services. This is a particularly difficult point in regard to the dockyard towns. The "Dockyard Mateys", as they are often called, are provided with accommodation, for example, in Singapore, or Gibraltar or wherever they may be overseas, but when they return to this country there is no accommodation for them and they are very seldom on any housing list. Just outside Plymouth there used to be an estate called Lee Mill Estate, but it has recently been taken over by the Plympton authorities. At the moment, people who come back from abroad, having had accommodation provided there, and then go to work in the dockyards in Plymouth, Chatham or Portsmouth, have no accommodation whatsoever. Many of them have young children, and this presents a tremendous problem for them.
  The main difficulty with the naval housing nowadays arises from the system of centralised drafting. Before this system was introduced the drafting
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  was done from Plymouth, Portsmouth, Chatham or Rosyth, but now it is all done centrally from Whitehall and the personnel are "nobody's children" on the housing lists. This means that the difficulties in the Navy are even greater than they are in the Army or the Royal Air Force.
  Consideration should be given by the right hon. Gentleman to speeding up the building of houses for naval personnel, for this reason alone. Will he consider giving priority to this question, as it is one of the great worries in the Navy? When we think of a large ship like H.M.S. "Eagle" we find that a great deal of time is spent by officers in dealing with family affairs. It must be remembered that these ships carry nearly 3,000 people: they are like small villages or even towns. One of the main worries of the sailors is about their families and about their housing conditions, and if something could be done for them it would be a great advantage.
  I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman's Department deals with hirings. Is his Department responsible for repairing hirings or seeing that they are in order?
  Mr. C. Pannell: Not under this Bill.
  Dame Joan Vickers: Hirings do not come under the Bill. I shall have to find out about them in some other way.
  Mr. Pannell: My Department is concerned, but not under the Bill. If the hon. Lady writes to me about it she will get an answer, but I have to bear in mind many points which have been raised during this debate and which I shall have to answer at the end. That is why I make the point that this matter does not come under the Bill.
  Dame Joan Vickers: This is an important point, and I shall certainly write to the right hon. Gentleman. I hope to receive a reply which will enlighten me about the position.
  I hope that I have said enough to ensure that the right hon. Gentleman will consider my points, and I particularly hope that I have been able to persuade him to appreciate the fact that there ought to be a different type of layout of buildings for the Royal Navy. I would once more remind him

  477
  that recruiting for the Royal Navy is worse than it is for the other Services, and I hope that he will see that the Royal Navy receives an adequate share of the allocations that are to be made in the future.
  8.35 p.m.
  Mr. E. G. Perry: I welcome the Bill because I think that it will be a contribution to the housing situation for all in this country. While it only deals with Service men, for every Service man for whom accommodation is provided or is improved the civilian problem is helped considerably.
  When I see that the Bill will introduce these proposals, I consider it to be a contribution which we have all been waiting for, particularly when considering that the human problems of Service men are far worse than those of civilians. If the civilian and his family live in poor conditions, they can sometimes stomach it for quite a long time, but when the Service man, separated from his family, knows that his family is living in poor conditions, it does not help his discipline, good conduct and all the other things which make up an efficient Service man.
  I welcome the Bill because I think that it is a good contribution, both from the point of view of the Service men and from that of civilians. I thought that it was ungracious of the right hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) to suggest that we had only introduced the Bill as a delaying tactic, while we were framing other legislation. I am quite sure that the Government Front Bench have had this idea in their minds ever since they have been in office. I am convinced that they have the interests of the Service men and the civilians at heart when it comes to housing problems. I am quite sure that everyone in this House wants to treat this as a non-party matter, because it is important that our Service men should have security of housing in their minds. The more we can do in this respect, the better it will be for the Services and the country.
  The right hon. Member for Harrogate suggested that the Bill does not go far enough, and I am inclined to agree with him. However, let us be quite
  478
  clear about the fact that in the next three years twice as much accommodation will be provided as was provided in the last three years. I think that that is a considerable advance upon what has already been done. I am glad that there is a departure from the established procedure of this matter being treated on the Defence Estimates. The question of housing for Service men should be apart from Defence Estimates. As has been said, it should not be taken in competition with tanks or ships. Service men have a right to housing apart from the Defence Estimates. I welcome this change of procedure. In providing this for Service men, we are also doing civil life a good turn, because we are providing them with housing.
  Mr. Sharples: I think it should be pointed out that this is not a change in procedure. This is an extension of legislation which has gone on for many years.
  Mr. Perry: I thank the hon. Member, and I stand corrected. If it is not a change in procedure and has been going on for so many years, I am glad to hear it. I am glad that it is a procedure which will be continued.
  In the London area there are many flats which are let out to Service personnel on a hiring basis at considerable rents of four, five, six, seven or eight guineas a week. If we can continue building more flats and houses for Servicemen, by an extension of the Bill, we shall be able, in the long run, to see that more flats and houses are allocated to civilians from that source of supply, instead of going to Service personnel. I am very glad to welcome the introduction of industrialised building, because I think that with that kind of production we can have a much more speedy process of erection of flats and houses, as has been proved in many localities in London.
  I am not trying to introduce a political note on this, but the right hon. Member for Harrogate said that we came in on a very easy wicket. I consider that when we came into Government the wicket was not very easy. It was a bit sticky. We are having to play some very funny balls because of the state of the wicket. I suggest that the Bill will go a long way towards solving the

  479
  housing problems for Service men and civilians.
  8.40 p.m.
  Mr. Simon Wingfield Digby: I wish to welcome the Bill. Anyone who has had experience of the working of this housing legislation will agree that the success of the 1949 Act was perhaps among the greatest of the Measures introduced by an earlier Labour Government. Hon. Members on this side of the House were somewhat mystified when, on 9th November, the Minister—he is not present in the Chamber at the moment—said that this legislation might not be renewed. We were alarmed by that statement.
  The Minister said that the provision of housing would go on by a different method and those who are aware of the problems could not understand what method would be proposed. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will provide an explanation when he winds up the debate.
  The principle of loans for the Services is not new. It was in use a long time before 1949. The dockyard at Gibraltar—a place very much in the news at present—was built under a loan, something which may not he generally remembered by hon. Members. I think it a good thing that a project which competes with the day-to-day needs of the Services should be put on a loan basis. There is a case for extending loans in certain circumstances and certainly, when applied to housing, I think it a very useful idea.
  I wish to know why the Measure is up to be renewed only for three years. Reference has been made to the fact that it is sometimes difficult to fit a Measure of this kind into the Government's legislative programme. That has happened in the past. When we are going to all the trouble of providing a new Act it seems a pity that it should not extend for more than three years. Surely it would be the intention of this or any other Government to continue with this procedure for a good deal longer than three years, but at the end of that time another Measure will be competing for a place in the Government's legislative programme and difficulty may arise.
  We come to the question why a figure of £45 million has been fixed. From a
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  recent Parliamentary Answer we know that no less than £90 million has been spent under this legislation, and almost exactly the same figure is outstanding as a debt from the various Service Departments to the Treasury on account of it. According to the figure I was given the other day, 31,750 quarters have been built. I was a little surprised when the Parliamentary Secretary used a different figure of 33,000, which did not seem to correspond with the figure given in that Answer. No doubt there is a technical reason for that.
  The Parliamentary Secretary spoke about the theory that when married quarters are no longer required by the Services they will be taken over by local authorities. By now I suppose that a number of such cases have occurred. I can recall that in earlier cases it was sometimes difficult to persuade a local authority to take over the quarters when they were no longer required by the Services. I hope that we shall be given an assurance about this procedure. I imagine that it is a voluntary act on the part of the local authority concerned.
  We are also aware from Parliamentary Answers that by 31st March only £2·8 million of the money previously voted under the legislation would be left. There is no doubt that there was urgent need to provide more money, either by loan or in some other way. When one realises that there are no fewer than 40,000 hirings in force in this country today one sees that there is a case for us to increase the number of houses to 40,000 more, at a cost of £135 million. Thus, it is a pity that the amount has been fixed at £45 million over three years, for we could have looked much further ahead. I may be wrong about this and perhaps there is a technical reason why that could not be done.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) made a number of good points in an extremely interesting speech. She pointed to the difficulty of siting because, even when one finds an adequate site, it is not always desirable to build a block of, say, 1,000 married quarters all in the one place. This form of building is not always best liked by the Service people themselves. In fact, some of them do not like living in married quarters at all. This particularly applies to officers,

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  many of whom would rather find their own accommodation. The siting of married quarters is a different problem to the siting of council houses and I hope that the Ministry will continue to give careful thought to this problem.
  I turn to the question of the amount of work which remains to be done for the Royal Navy, which is very much behind the other Services in the number of married quarters at its disposal. I understard that there are 8,500 married quarters for the Royal Navy in this country within the terms of this Measure and that there are 4,500 hirings still kept. This shows that there is room for a great many more married quarters to be built for the Royal Navy.
  The Parliamentary Secretary made great play of the fact that 5,000 quarters would be built each year; 5,000 next year, and more after that. If I have done my arithmetic correctly, I gather from the 1964 Statement on Defence that building is already running at the rate of about 4,300 so that there would appear to be an increase of 700, which is not as startling an increase as one might at first imagine.
  I come to the whole question of the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Building and Works for the various works projects of the Services. I hope that the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary will appreciate that there is nothing personal meant in what I am about to say. When the Conservative Government had this idea of putting the works of the Services under the Ministry of Public Building and Works I was opposed to it. I still am, although if the Ministry does well enough in its tasks it may be able to convert me. I see the advantages of having a common design for building for the Services, but much of the day to day work of the Ministry is different from that of the Services.
  Under the old scheme each of the Services' Works Departments had separate requirements. Just one example is that the Navy Works Department insisted that men had to be able to dive; to go down beneath the water to examine jetties, and so on. A great deal of the work of the R.A.F. and the Navy is in the constructing of airfields. I do not know whether the Ministry of Public Building and Works builds airfields for the Ministry of Aviation and whether the former
  482
  has any experience of doing this work. The construction of runways for modern aircraft is a very specialist business.
  It is difficult to provide adequate and suitable married quarters and other personnel accommodation for the Services unless one lives in close proximity with Service people. I suppose that that could be overcome to a certain extent by insisting that officers of the Ministry live close to Service people, meeting Service men and members of their families each day so that they know more about their problems.
  I see in this arrangement a very great difficulty. If my memory serves me aright, this arrangement was entered into before we had the new co-ordinated plan for the Ministry of Defence. Now that we have that plan, I think that the Works Department belongs there. The Services Lands Branch, which used to go in with the Works Department, has been kept by the Services—I believe that it is now under the War Office—but I have the greatest doubts whether this is the right course.
  I believe that the Works Department should go back to the new co-ordinated Ministry of Defence, but, in saying that, I do not wish in any way to detract from the enthusiasm of the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary. I am sure that they will put a lot of enthusiasm into this tremendous task of finding married quarters for the Services, putting them in the right place, building them to the right design, and remembering the difference in taste there is between one Service family and another.
  8.51 p.m.
  Mr. A. P. Costain: Anyone looking at the Title of this Bill for the first time might think that its purpose was to lend money to the Armed Forces to enable them to build their own houses, but we know that that is not so. We only wish that the Services had a greater opportunity so to do.
  This Measure, which follows the pattern of what has happened in the past, gives the Minister of Public Building and Works an excellent opportunity to plan ahead, and to use the resources of his Ministry to the best of his ability. In this connection he has described himself, quite rightly, as a builder. He should not be ashamed to describe himself in

  483
  that way—I am sure that he is not—because it gives the Department the opportunity to carry out new and interesting experiments in building since, although the Department is the builder, it is virtually the builder-owner-client.
  The Ministry has to satisfy the needs of the Services. My hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby) has drawn attention to the different requirements of the three Services, and I will not go into details on the various occupations under this heading, because to do so would bore the House and would also be outside the scope of the Bill. It would, however, be most helpful to us if the Minister would indicate how the new ideas of his Department were operating.
  The hon. Lady mentioned that there are 2,000 industrially-built houses for the Armed Services in the programme, but I recall that that was announced last May—over nine months ago. The gestation period is well past. Has any progress been made?
  I should like some detailed information about interest rates. I am always suspicious of anything in a Bill that refers to a special rate of interest, particularly when the Bill is brought in by the present Government, which have confused us immensely over interest rates. What does subsection (4) of Clause 2 mean? Is it tied to the Public Works Loan Board, and why is there this special reference to the rate of interest? Does this Clause apply when the extended period mentioned in the Bill expires?
  I have two points to make in relation to occupation and maintenance. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington) spoke at some length about construction problems at Aldershot. I know that the Minister has adequate answers in this connection. I will not trespass on his prerogative of giving them. I am sure that he is sufficiently au fait with the situation to know that the buildings which collapsed were in an experimental stage and that the contractor on his own initiative undertook to pull them down entirely at his own cost. It would be wrong for any reflection to be made on the contractor concerned. In case anybody should think that I had an interest, I will say that it is not my own
  484
  company which did it, so I am free from either praise or blame on this score.
  It is important that this money should be used by the Ministry to experiment on new forms of construction, because the Ministry has these opportunities to do so. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby) that the siting of the accommodation is important. There are many examples of Army units which have been moved. It is vital that local authorities can take these houses over for their own use. I have in my own constituency of Folkestone and Hythe a great interest in Army buildings—Shorncliffe Camp, the School of Infantry and Lydd Camp. We are concerned about three things with regard to Army housing. One is that the War Office has large areas which are in normal housing developments. I should like to feel that this land could be guaranteed for local planning authorities so that it is used to the best advantage.
  We have a second problem in relation to the number of soldiers who are stationed there with their wives and then reach retirement age. It is always a problem for the local authority housing committee to know what priority to give to these men. I should have liked the Bill to provide opportunities for the soldiers, or indeed for members of any of the Services, to have some right to purchase the houses—their homes. It would be much more satisfactory if they could take them over. I know that it is not directly the responsibility of the Minister of Public Building and Works, but I am sure that forward planning here would be of great value.
  There is no reference in the Bill to other services. Could we have some clarification as to whether under this loan the Minister is allowed to build amenities for the stations? Houses are no good without the other necessary amenities.
  Mr. C. Pannell: What amenities?
  Mr. Costain: I am thinking of swimming pools and schools, for example.
  Mr. Pannell: No.
  Mr. Costain: I thank the Minister for his prompt reply, although it was a negative one. Perhaps he would tell us how those are dealt with, because they are essential amenities.

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  This is a Bill which we should welcime. We should realise that it is an extension of what has already been done. I cannot accept the statement made by the hon. Member who came in, made his speech and went out again, that this shows a big increase on the production—
  Mr. C. Pannell: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is quite on the wicket when he reproves my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Perry) for coming in, making a speech and going out. My hon. Friend is not the only one, is he?
  Mr. Costain: I do not wish to make a political point. Unfortunately, I do not know the hon. Member's constituency. I could snot point to him: he was not there. That was the only way in which I could refer to him. I was not making any reference to the fact that he was not in the House. The Minister must not be so touchy. How else could I refer to a new hon. Member whom I did not know? He sat in the corner and went out. How could I refer to him otherwise? We all have to leave for many reasons.
  I say no more about that, but I did wish to refer to the hon. Gentleman on one point. I am sorry that he is not here now because I do not like criticising someone when he is not present, but where does the hon. Gentleman get the story that there will be a big increase of Service housing under the Bill? I hope the Minister will explain how we shall get the increased number of houses which his hon. Friend has been led to believe there will be.
  9.0 p.m.
  Mr. Anthony Kershaw: My curiosity was aroused at the beginning of the debate about why we should have this Bill now, and, although he seemed to react rather sharply to the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden), the right hon. Gentleman did not adequately clear the matter up. On 9th November, one of my hon. Friends asked when we were to have an Armed Forces (Housing Loans) Bill, and the right hon. Gentleman answered that the matter was being considered and he was not yet ready to make a statement. So far so good. But, obviously, he was not seized with enthusiasm by the thought of being able to introduce a Bill. He was taking a long cool look at it.
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  Then I read that in another place my noble Friend, Earl Jellicoe, asked the Minister there what he proposed to do about it, and Lord Mitchison replied that he did not know either and that he was by no means convinced that a housing loans Bill was the best way to deal with the matter. Is it the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman and of the Government that this is not the best way of doing it? Is that why it has taken so long, and, if it is not the best way of doing it, what is? Everyone knows from a long and happy acquaintance with the noble Lord that Lord Mitchison knows what he is talking about on housing matters and he is a very hard working gentleman. If he says that this Bill is not the best way of doing it, this is something of which the Government should take notice and about which we should inquire. Why is the noble Lord so bothered that this is not a good Bill? I suppose that he will be responsible for introducing it in the other House. If the right hon. Gentleman has not had an opportunity of meeting Lord Mitchison recently—I do not blame him if he has not because there are so many Members of the Government that, obviously, he cannot keep up with them all—the noble Lord will have to explain how it comes about that the Bill is a bad Bill, but, nevertheless, he must introduce it.
  What is wrong with the Bill? Is it too expensive for the country to afford? Will it provide houses too slowly or, perhaps, too quickly? In what form would the right hon. Gentleman have preferred to bring it to the House on this first occasion when he proposes to deal with how the Forces should be housed in the future? Perhaps the reason for the delay is simply that the right hon. Gentleman needed time to acquaint himself with the details of the matter. No one will blame him for that. His very great knowledge of building has so far been exhibited in his great knowledge, much to the profit of this House, of the building in which we are now. He knows everything about the Palace of Westminster. For anyone wanting to know about the drains or the superstructure here, the right hon. Gentleman is the acknowledged expert, and we always ask him. It must have been quite a chore to work out exactly what to do for Forces housing.

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  The right hon. Gentleman will not mind my saying—he was quite pleased himself to disclaim any right to it—that he has not a seat in the Cabinet, as his predecessor had.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Dr. Horace King): Order. I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with interest. I hope that he will come to the Bill.
  Mr. Kershaw: If I may say so, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I believe that this is relevant because we must assess the importance of the Bill and the timing of its arrival in the House, since the need is so great, and we must inquire about the delay. In all these matters, a Minister has the opportunity, in the Cabinet or outside, to press for what he wants. The fact that the right hon. Gentleman is not in the Cabinet militates against his being able to produce a Bill quickly, and it may have contributed—I ask whether this is so—to the delay over this Bill. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman reads Hook in the Daily Mail; he may have seen it this morning. I think that up to now the right hon. Gentleman has known more about the corridors of this House than power.
  The hon. Lady has told us the total number of houses that we hope to get by the Bill. I wonder what the annual rate is likely to be. I may have missed this, and I apologise if I did. It is of importance. We know there is a Backlog—
  Miss Jennie Lee: The annual rate will be as close to 5,000 as possible.
  Mr. Kershaw: I am much obliged. If it had been possible to increase the rate to start with and tail off towards the end, it would have been very acceptable. I realise that there could have been administrative difficulties about that. Nevertheless, the need is now, and the sooner we could increase the pace, if increasing the pace is the question, the better it would have been.
  This also raises a question which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will consider—that if there is any substantial redeployment of the Forcees back to this country during this period, we have no flexibility provided by the Bill. I do not make any complaint against the right hon. Gentleman for that, for, obviously, it will not be his decision that troops
  488
  should pour back to this country. The rate of house-building obviously cannot keep pace with a large number of troops suddenly coming back. That is why I say that it would have been a great advantage if it had been possible to increase the rate now and tail off towards the end, although the total would have been the same at the end. After all, there are proposals that very large forces should be brought back to this country, and I hope that when the proposal is made the right hon. Gentleman will be able to tell his colleagues that, apart from any military, strategic or political considerations, the problem of housing the families would be insuperable and would be a very large bar to the return of large numbers of troops now stationed on the Continent, such as his right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shin-well) is constantly advocating.
  I should also like to know what is meant by "appropriate rate" in Clause 1(4), which states:
  "The rate of interest required to be paid under the said section 1(3) shall be such as the Treasury may determine instead of the appropriate rate as therein defined."
  That seems to argue that the Treasury will propose an inappropriate rate. In view of who is in charge of the Treasury today, that does not seem at all surprising. Perhaps Mr. Three Per Cent. will have some propositions to make about the rate.
  Mr. C. Pannell: The phraseology in this Bill with regard to the rate of interest is just the same as the phraseology in all the Measures of the previous Administration. Therefore, this imputation merely betokens a degree of ignorance on the part of the hon. Gentleman, and hardly deserves an answer.
  Mr. Kershaw: I merely wanted to know whether the right hon. Gentleman himself understood this. Perhaps he will be good enough to give an explanation when he speaks. We have had a certain amount of argy-bargy about rates of interest. The question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) about the longterm effect after three years of the rate, whatever it might be, which had been charged from time to time was one of technical importance and certainly ought to be answered in the House.

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  I should also like to know whether in considering housing for the Forces the right hon. Gentleman takes into consideration the terms of the Protection from Eviction Act. There are many occasions when units go abroad, and then those concerned let their houses furnished for a year or so, knowing that they will shortly return. It would, of course, be very unfair and quite an impost upon the families concerned if they were not able to rent their houses without knowing whether they could get back into them if they were posted home.
  As I understand the Protection from Eviction Act, it may well be that a court order would be necessary. It would take about three months if such unpleasantness had to be undergone and, therefore, families posted home suddenly might well find that they could not get back into their own homes. For that reason, they will be reluctant to let them and anything that the right hon. Gentleman can say to clarify the situation will be welcome.
  A factory in my constituency made prefabricated housing. I am sorry to say that, three or four years ago, it closed down because it could not get the big cities of the West, with the exception of Swansea, to interest themselves in industrial housing and the firm decided that it could do all its work from a factory in the Home Counties. However, it now smells more success on the horizon and is to reopen Reema Factory at Tetbury in my constituency, which will be within the reach of many military establishments in the West. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to improve upon the figure of 2,000 industrialised houses, which are admittedly not very appropriate for the Cotswolds but are very appropriate elsewhere.
  It has been said that housing is more necessary for the Forces than ever before. We welcome the fact that recruiting is going well. We must deal with the possibility that more of the Forces overseas will come home and that there may be a larger home strategic reserve than before. Thus, the provision of housing is absolutely essential if recruiting is to continue at a high level.
  I am not trying to "knock" the Bill, but I feel, with the best will in the world, that it does not see far enough
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  into the future. It is to run for only three years. It will actually reduce the amount of money we thought was to be made available for housing. On the face of it, it is an interim Measure which will not alleviate the housing problems of the Forces.
  I do not suppose that any Bill that the right hon. Gentleman could bring in could immediately alleviate those problems, but this Bill does not look beyond three years and at the end of that time I think that we shall find the housing situation of the Forces much the same as it is today. Any further prospects for the future about which he can tell us will be very welcome.
  9.13 p.m.
  Sir Richard Glyn: I am a little concerned, as are most hon. Members, to see that the Bill—and I should welcome a correction—appears to be reducing the amount of money available for the very important purpose of helping to provide married accommodation for the Services. I am sure that the Government would not wish to give the impression that they are effecting economies, however necessary, at the expense of the married Service men.
  It would appear, however, that this is the interpretation to be derived from the Bill which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) has pointed out, is an interim Bill, to run for three years. It gives the unfortunate impression of being designed to effect economies at the expense of a class or group of our fellow citizens who are least well placed to bear them.
  Miss Jennie Lee: I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman was present when I gave the figures. They showed that the highest expenditure in any one previous year was about £10 million, while it was £12,500,000 for the current year and was to rise to £16 million and £18 million. I not only gave the actual amount of money being provided but the number of houses to be built. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that, far from economising, while we may not talk about never having had it so good, or opulence, even with the financial period which we have inherited, very much better financial provision will have been made.
  Sir Richard Glyn: If more money is to be available, I am very surprised that the hon. Lady did not feel it right to intervene in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, who was obviously under the same apprehension, misapprehension or not, as I am. On the face of it, the Bill seems to be making things less good rather than better. If more money is actually to be spent—the words are "made available" and they could mean anything—on Service housing, I shall be the first to rejoice in this knowledge. We shall have to wait and see what happens.
  Those hon. Members with practical knowledge of the position have in mind that if the policies so often advocated by Labour Members are implemented and large numbers of troops from any of the three Services are brought back to this country, there will be nowhere where they and their families can be accommodated. This is a serious problem which must be faced by the Government whose supporters are constantly advocating such a course of action. It is an attractive proposition in many ways, but we are sadly deficient in married quarters and other accommodation for married Service men in this country, and we are not over well equipped in any other part of the world.
  I hope that the Minister will make clear what target of Service married quarters and other married accommodation he is aiming at within these three years. I am delighted to be told if more money is to be made available, but we ought to know what figure the Government think appropriate for the Services which total about 400,000 men of whom an ever-increasing proportion will be married. The married element of the three Services is as entitled to proper accommodation and other facilities for its families as any other section of the public.
  What is being done? The Ministry of Public Building and Works now has this responsibility and hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed great hopes about what the Ministry will be able to achieve at home and abroad. Nobody wishes to suggest that the Ministry will fail in the great task before it, but we want to know how the Ministry proposes to set about discharging the obligation which now lies upon it. There is no doubt that more than one-third
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  of all Service men are married and I greatly question whether the total of available married accommodation, married quarters and hirings, at home and abroad reaches 130,000. There can be no doubt that even if the total is 130,000, that figure will be inappropriate in a year or two. The House is entitled to know what the Ministry proposes to do to help in this regard.
  The Bill is, I suppose, a step in the right direction, but it seems to many of us that it is an ineffectual and insufficient step. There will be some dissatisfaction and, not alarm and despondency, but regret about the wording of subsection (4) of Clause 1, in particular, which says:
  "The rate of interest required to be paid under the said section 1(3) shall be such as the Treasury may determine instead of the appropriate rate as therein defined."
  This wording may be perfectly proper, appropriate and suitable. The Minister said that it had been used in previous Acts by previous Administrations. But they were not Administrations which had gone some way towards forfeiting public confidence concerning low rates of mortgage interest which practical considerations have shown to be unfounded and unjustified.
  Mr. Stanley Orme: Wait and see.
  Sir Richard Glyn: The hon. Member, speaking from a sitting position, says, "Wait and see". I will give way to him immediately if he wishes to intervene.
  Mr. Orme: The hon. Gentleman is referring to a short-term policy of the Government. What I am saying to him is that he should wait for the development of the full policy and then make his criticisms.
  Sir Richard Glyn: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. Nothing would give me personally or my hon. Friends greater pleasure than to see more favourable conditions arise for members of the Services. Speaking personally—and I think that I am not without support—as far as the public and myself are able to judge, the situation is tending to get worse rather than better. If there comes a time when the Government are able to astonish us by the beneficence of their administration of the Bill, it will

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  be greatly welcomed by my hon. Friends and myself, and, indeed, by everyone concerned with Service matters.
  Sir E. Errington: Does my hon. Friend understand subsection (4) to permit a subsidised rate of interest? It is important that we should know whether the Government have in mind subsidising the rate of interest.
  Sir Richard Glyn: I am much obliged. I take the view that, unless the Government subsidise the rate of interest very substantially, it will be altogether beyond the means of the average Service family. The question whether the Minister is able to help us on this point or whether he has been able to use his influence with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to get permission to subsidise the rate of interest to a marked extent is important. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman will let us know the answer. However, if he cannot do that, it seems to me that the current commercial rate of interest, which has been raised to such an alarming height by the Government, is likely to put the benefits which may stem from the Bill outside the means of the average Service family. This is most unfortunate.
  I wish to sound a most definite note of dissatisfaction with the way in which the Bill has been presented, and I very much hope that the doubts which I have expressed will be allayed by the Minister. I hope that he will make it perfectly clear that the Government will do what I think everyone concerned thinks is right and proper and will ensure that, in spite of the wide power which they have reserved in subsection (4), the rate of interest to be paid is within the means of the Service personnel or that a substantial subsidy is made available so that the married quarter accommodation which is needed for all the Services is provided.
  9.25 p.m.
  Mr. Richard Sharples: I should like, first, to congratulate the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary on the clarity with which she moved the Second Reading of the Bill. I can only say, as one who held the position which the hon. Lady now holds until I was overtaken by events in October, that I hope she will
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  find her time at the Ministry as enjoyable and as interesting as I did.
  We on this side welcome the Bill as far as it goes. We have a number of questions to ask about it, and they have been put forward by my right hon. and hon. Friends, but, in general, we welcome the fact that the Bill has been introduced by the Government. My first question to the Minister, which has been put to him by hon. Members on both sides, is why is the Bill intended to last for only three years whereas previous Acts have continued for a minimum of five years?
  The Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy, whom we are glad to see in his place, said in answer to a Question on 8th February that there was need for 40,000 additional married quarters and this figure was confirmed this afternoon by the Parliamentary Secretary. The Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy went rather further and in his reply to the Question said that an additional 4,500 quarters in the United Kingdom were substandard. In the period covered by the Bill, the hon. Lady has told us that a total of only 15,000 married quarters are to be provided, leaving a gap of 25,000.
  In criticism, perhaps, of the hon. Lady, I would say that she was somewhat ungenerous in her opening remarks about the work which was done by her right hon. Friend's predecessor, Mr. Geoffrey Rippon, when he held the post of Minister of Public Building and Works, to bring about a solution of the married quarters programme. The Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy was much more realistic than the hon. Lady, because he said in the debate on 14th December:
  "One of the follies of being polemical in these matters is that inevitably we have to take into account the ideas and started projects of our predecessors."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th December, 1964; Vol. 704, c. 154.]
  Miss Jennie Lee: Did the hon. Gentleman consider it ungenerous or inaccurate of me to have pointed out that in the last three years of his Administration fewer than 10,000 houses were built and that in the three years on which we are now embarking the programme is for 15,000?
  Mr. Sharpies: Since the time when responsibility was transferred to the Minister of Public Building and Works, I am sure that the hon. Lady will have noted the steadily increasing programme of married quarters that were being built. It is true to say that every married quarter in the programme announced by the hon. Lady this afternoon up to at least 1966–67 was already in the pipeline when the present Administration took office.
  Taking the figures which were given by the right hon. Gentleman in reply to a Question, the programme of the previous Government provided for the completion of 3,750 houses in the present financial year; next year the completions, again under the programme provided by the previous Government, were to be 4,500; and the year after that 5,400. Yet in 1967–68, that is, the final year of the period covered by the Bill, and the first year when the present Government can have any influence upon the number of completions, there is to be a drop of 300 in those numbers.
  I want to turn for a moment to the question of cost. I again refer to a reply which was given by the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy, who told us that the total cost of providing the number of married quarters required is in the region of £135 million at current prices. Yet this Bill provides over a three-year period for only £45 million, and, even allowing for the £28 million remaining under previous Acts, this will leave a gap of about £87 million at current prices before the married quarters programme can be completed.
  The House would like to know from the right hon. Gentleman this evening how it is intended that the remainder of this programme is to be financed. The Bill only finances about one year's building over and above what has already been agreed in principle. The Parliamentary Secretary spoke of a rolling programme three years ahead. It is difficult for the House to see how the Bill, which comes into operation on 31st March this year, is to provide for a rolling programme three years ahead at any time after 31st March.
  One effect of the Bill is to transfer responsibility for the administration of the Armed Forces (Housing Loans) Acts to
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  the Minister of Public Building and Works. One reason, of course, for the transfer of responsibility for Service building to this Ministry was that responsibility for the co-ordination of research and development into modem methods of building should be concentrated in one Ministry. To do this, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, it was essential that the Ministry of Public Building and Works should have a sufficiently large building programme to be able to place development contracts, particularly for housing through the Services married quarters programme. I think that the hon. Lady, once again, was a little ungenerous in referring to the special arrangements which were being made inside the Ministry for the organisation of research and development in housing. The whole of that organisation was set up, as I understand, under the previous Administration. If there have been any changes or any improvements or any developments since the right hon. Gentleman took office, then the House, I am sure, would like to hear about them.
  I think that the Minister, too, should use this opportunity of telling the House what progress has been made in the placing of development contracts for Service housing since he came into office. The hon. Lady spoke of 2,000 houses being built by industrialised methods. This fact was announced in a Press notice on 19th May, 1964, by the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor.
  Since the right hon. Gentleman came into office, has there been any addition to the number of houses being built under development contracts? I think that I am right in saying that the figure given by the hon. Lady was a slight underestimate, because in addition to the 2,000 houses being built under the programme to which she referred, 370 houses are being built under the 5M scheme at Catterick. The House would like to know whether any further development contracts have been placed, because the hon. Lady appeared to take some credit for the placing of these contracts which were in fact placed before she assumed responsibility for this matter.
  The House would like to know, too, what progress has been made—these are the houses being built under the terms of previous Acts of this kind—with the scheme for 1,000 married quarters to be

  497
  built by factory methods for the Royal Navy at Gosport. Is that scheme going ahead? Has work actually started on the ground?
  What thought is better given to the construction of isolated married quarters by methods of prefabrication? I was interested in this matter when I was at the Ministry, and I found some reluctance in the Service Departments to accept prefabricated houses, particularly where senior officers were concerned. What consideration is the Minister giving to this aspect of the matter?
  My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) and others referred to the effect of the Protection from Eviction Act on the demand for married quarters. I am certain that one effect of this Act will be to reduce the number of hirings. I am sure that it will reduce the number of people offering their houses as furnished accommodation for Service families.
  Another effect will almost certainly be that those Service personnel who own houses arid who normally let them while they are serving abroad will find it more difficult to regain possession, and as a result of this Act there will be an onus on the Government to increase the married quarters programme.
  En an intervention during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, the Minister said that the provision of interest rates was the same as in previous Acts. The previous Acts refer to the "appropriate rate". I think that the right hon. Gentleman will probably wish to check on that.
  Mr. C. Pannell: I have done so.
  Mr. Sharples: As I said at the beginning of my speech, we welcome the fact that the Government have brought forward this Bill at all, but we wish that it went a great deal further than it does. We believe that it provides for too short a period—three years—to enable a continuing programme to be developed. We believe that it is too limited in scope to provide an adequate development programme on which the success of the nation's housing programme must depend to a large extent. We believe that it fails to lake into account the changed situation resulting from the introduction of the Protection from Eviction Act.
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  We welcome the Bill, but there are a great many questions to which we shall require answers either tonight or during the Committee stage.
  9.40 p.m.
  The Minister of Public Building and Works (Mr. Charles Pannell): Just to deal with the last point, I would like to point out that although those may be the side effects, the mere fact that in respect of Service tenancies the Crown is no longer relying upon its own position in evicting people will surely give large numbers of Service men a protection that they have never had before.
  Listening to the debate tonight one would never have thought that this Government took office only on 15th October last. Every complaint that has been put tonight arises from an inquest on the administration of our predecessors. All the things that we are now examining arose from what happened under the previous Administration.
  Sir Richard Glynv rose—
  Mr. Pannell: No, I will not give way. The hon. Member came in late and made a speech in which he went over many points which had already been made by other Members. I do not intend to give way to him. I thought that his speech was peculiarly inept and that he could not have listened to the speech made by my hon. Friend at the beginning of the debate.
  Sir E. Errington rose—
  Mr. Pannell: I cannot give way.
  Mr. Kershaw: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Must this debate come to an end at ten o'clock, or can we go on all night?
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): I understand that it was arranged that the debate should end at ten o'clock.
  Mr. Ramsden: I understood that since the Bill originated in Committee of Ways and Means it was exempted business. We do not want to extend the proceedings, but it should be made clear that the right hon. Gentleman has ample time in which to reply.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is so. It is exempted business, and it can continue beyond ten o'clock.
  Mr. Pannell: I was not disputing that. I was referring to the fact that there were the usual gentlemanly exchanges between the Front Benches, in which the hon. Member gave me the time at which he intended to rise and the time at which he intended to sit down. I know that it is exempted business.
  Sir E. Errington rose—
  Mr. Pannell: No. I think that since I have sat here all the time I am entitled not to be interrupted so early in my speech. Many things have been said, almost reaching contempt for the Chair, in connection with "phoney" points of order.
  Mr. Kershaw: On a point of order. Is it in order for a Minister who blusters at the Box to say that you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, have been dealing with a "phoney" point of order? You gave a Ruling in a perfectly proper way.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is not a point of order. I was not in the Chair at the time, and did not hear it. I cannot give any Ruling on it.
  Mr. Pannell: I am referring to the advice given not under your chairmanship, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but in a previous debate, when Mr. Deputy-Speaker on four occasions had to rebuke hon. Members opposite for interrupting speeches by putting points of order which he suggested were not points of order. I was saying that I am entitled to be allowed to get on with my speech.
  Behind the Bill lies the question of the way in which we treat our Service men. Are we going to treat them as citizens? One thing that I have always admired about the United States is the terrific status enjoyed by the veterans. Generally speaking, any man who has put his body between his country and the enemy is entitled to rather better treatment than others, and not to worse treatment.
  If we consider the conditions in some of the barracks that our Service men have had to live in—whether they he the naval barracks referred to by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) or the Knightsbridge Barracks—we realise that they are a reproach to this country. As regards the last 13 years at least, it can be said
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  in simple justice that this Government had nothing to do with the situation. So we are to a degree having an inquest on what has happened before.
  At least, let us all agree upon this, that on both sides of the House we should try to do better in the future than has been done in the past. I went the other week to see the Invicta Barracks, at Maidstone, and I thought that they were probably among the best barracks in the world. I probably live nearer to Woolwich than any other Member of the House who is here tonight and I know the position there.
  On the question of the Bill coming in earlier, it should have been noticed that there was plenty of time for me to make up my mind, because the operative date is 31st March, and, therefore, it was a matter of bringing in the Bill in good time. I answered a Question on the first day on which I ever answered Questions at all and the Answer which I gave to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart) was:
  "I am considering whether the Act should be renewed."
  I should have thought it reasonable that when any Minister came into a Department he should see whether the thing had to be financed this way or in another way. No Minister, especially in the present parliamentary situation, would lightly embark on legislation. I proceeded with a reasonable caution. It was not a matter of great urgency. There were other more urgent things on my plate when I arrived at the Ministry.
  When I was asked again to give an assurance that the present considerable rate of building of married quarters would not be reduced, I said:
  "That does not enter into the matter at all."
  I was considering whether there were other methods of financing this if we had wanted to use them. I explained this myself when I said:
  "No, what we are considering here, as the hon. Member for Beckenham knows, is whether we shall proceed under legislation or by a different method. But, whatever happens I can give the hon. Member the full assurance that there will be no diminution, whichever way we run it, in the building of married quarters."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th November, 1964; Vol. 701, c. 648–9.]
  That was the pledge at the beginning and I think that it is achieved as much under one system as the other. This is largely

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  a matter for the accountants. This Bill concerns three Ministries. Though I bring the Bill forward, I am the contractor. The client is the Ministry of Defence and the financing Ministry is the Treasury. I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden), with his experience of the War Office, would know full well that these are matters which have to be gone into by a new Administration.
  I want to define the terms of the Bill. There was a great deal of misunderstanding in the debate about its scope and about what it does. It provides quarters—
  Sir E. Errington: Married quarters.
  Mr. Pannell: —almost entirely for Service personnel. The exceptions are such people as Army Department constabulary, who are civilians. In the main, it is Service personnel whom we are talking about.
  Sir E. Errington rose—
  Mr. Pannell: I think that, when there has been so much misunderstanding on this business, I must proceed in my own way. We had a long series of speeches, many of them from the other side of the House, so I shall be—
  Sir E. Errington: There is only the hon. Member on the Government side of the House.
  Mr. Pannell: That may well be so, but the hon. Gentleman made a speech and retired for a long time. I do not blame him, in the circumstances. Why should he listen to his colleagues? But he might listen to me while I attempt to give him the answer.
  In reply to the question raised by the hon. Member for Carshalton (Captain W. Elliot), the Vote by means of which these quarters will be financed will be one of the Votes of the Ministry of Public Building and Works, but it will be part of the Defence budget. I have never thought that one can ensure no reduction by this sort of accounting method, though the Ministry of Defence think that it is possible. I am not speaking now about whether this Government or another Government are in power. I have had experience of financial administration as chairman of finance committees of local authorities, and I know full well that in
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  any question of public expenditure this kind of thing is not decisive when it comes to a cut. I know that this is one of the sort of things in which the Ministry of Defence believes and it has been done in the way the Ministry want it. But I think that any Minister has the right at the beginning of his term of office to consider which way a project should be financed.
  There has, of course, been a great deal said by hon. Members opposite. They have not been united on the question of the merger of the three former Service Departments' building organisations and the former Ministry. The hon. Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby) had something to say about this. I have seen letters from him in the files in my Department and I know of his doubts and misgivings on this matter. He will have to reconcile these with his own Front Bench.
  I had previously been puzzled why this charge had been made in the way in which it has been made. I think it is understood better now that the thing has been in operation for some years and personnel are settling down. There has been an attempt to give the people in the Services the best things available in the civilian world. I do not think that it would be difficult to give them better barracks than under the old system. I know that there is discontent from time to time—
  Sir E. Errington: We are talking about married quarters, not barracks.
  Mr. Pannell: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. He is quite right.
  Sir E. Errington: Of course I am right, and the Minister is wrong.
  Mr. Pannell: The hon. Gentleman draws his inspiration—as Disraeli once said—from sources denied to Her Majesty's Government. Where has he been? He is very noisy.
  I am sorry if I used the word "barracks" in this connection. I am speaking of married quarters. I was speaking about the organisation in the Ministry of Works by which we cater for the three Services. People are settling down. At first there was a great deal of unhappiness, which was inescapable because of the resentment of people and the loyalty of individuals to different Services. But anyone who thinks that we intend to unscramble the scrambled eggs

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  should think again. It will not happen. I do not wish to refer to the fact again—although the hon. Member said it as some sort of rebuke—that I am not in the Cabinet. The previous Minister was not always in the Cabinet, nor was the former Secretary of State for War. All sorts of people may consider themselves to have been demoted. I am sufficiently busy not to be in the Cabinet. This is a technocratic job.
  Mr. Kershaw: I would not touch it with a barge pole.
  Mr. Pannell: Does the hon. Gentleman mean this job, or the Cabinet? He will not have the chance. The previous Minister lost his seat and we are here to stay.
  I ought to say why we are extending the legislation only for three years, because that is a cardinal point. If I cannot deal with all the points which have been raised I will see that those with which I do not deal are picked up within the Department.
  This method of financing the programme has come to be well understood by the forces. To adopt a different method might cause disquiet. The alternative method of financing out of Votes is equally acceptable now that we have established a procedure whereby the Ministry of Defence, my Department and the Treasury work jointly on a programme in which we always look three years ahead.
  There is no reason why capital expenditure by the Government should be met by loan rather than out of revenue. The Government normally finance their capital expenditure out of revenue. Whichever method of financing is adopted the sums in question have to be voted year after year in the Estimates. They are included in the total allotted for the Defence budget and have to be approved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for each year in the usual way.
  These are largely questions of accounting. What is important is that a firm decision should be taken to build more married quarters and that the forward programme should look beyond the next financial year. I can assure hon. Members that we will take this matter up within the three years, in plenty of time. In this and the next two years £47 million
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  will be spent on building married quarters in the United Kingdom, nearly double the amount spent in the preceding three years. These are the only figures that matter in this argument.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Devon-port asked about expected completions. Expected completions for the three Service are: for the Navy, 4,400, of which 4,000 come under the Bill; for the Army, 6,400, of which 6,000 come under the Bill and for the R.A.F., 4,200, of which 2,000 come under the Bill. I can assure the right hon. Member for Harrogate that married quarters for the Services will not be built unless the Services want them, for recruitment reasons and so on. They are, therefore, rightly, and have always been considered to be, a charge on the Defence Budget.
  There is another misunderstanding here. I was asked whether this Bill would apply to the building of married quarters abroad. The Bill applies in Great Britain in areas where there is likely to be a long-term requirement of housing for the civilian population. If, as a result of Service redeployment, quarters become surplus, it would be possible to dispose of them, either to local authorities, which would be likely to be the main takers of whole estates, or to private individuals. In outlying and scarcely-populated areas and abroad the building of married quarters for the Services continues to be financed on the ordinary Votes.
  Mr. Kershaw: Has there been any difficulty in the past with the disposal of married quarters to local authorities or other purchasers?
  Mr. Pannell: These quarters and estates are, in the main, built in agreement with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. There is, therefore, a tie-up or liaison between the two Ministries. I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman offhand or give him any specific examples of failure, but I will look into the matter and let him know the answer.
  Several hon. Members expressed interest in the cost of building Service married quarters and how they compared with local authority housing. Other ranks' houses are similar in size, design and layout to local authority houses. The cost of construction of a soldier's three-bedroomed house is about £3,000, including roads, although the price also includes

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  certain other items, such as linoleum and standard lamps, which are not normally provided by local authorities. Officers' houses for the Services are built to a somewhat higher standard. All except senior officers' houses are semi-detached, with three or four bedrooms and a garage. The average cost for a four-bedroomed house for a commander in the Royal Navy, a major or a squadron leader is £5,200.
  I think that I have answered most of the questions asked, except those put by the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington), who made out a considerable case for matters arising in his constituency at the Talavera Estate. Although this is not a complete answer, may I say that there has long been a serious scarcity of labour in the Aldershot area and that is why we have used, and still are using, industrialised systems to a great extent as against traditional building methods.
  The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) referred to the failure of these houses, but I am sure that he will agree that what he said cannot be taken as an indictment of the present Government, for those houses were built at the time of the previous Administration.
  Sir E. Errington: What I said was not an indictment of any Government. It is the responsibility of every Government to enable these people to live in decent comfort in these new houses. It has been said in the past that the best is hardly good enough for these people. I want that implemented, and I do not care which Government do it.
  Mr. Pannell: That is quite all right. I hope that if the election had gone the other way the hon. Gentleman would have said the same—
  Sir E. Errington: I did, and it can be read.
  Mr. Pannell: I accept the hon. Gentleman's case, and I did not take what he said as an indictment of myself. What was done happened under the previous Government, and I was mystified when I read of it in the Press. I will make the fullest inquiries—I know that the hon. Member is a good constituency Member. He will understand that one cannot go into these matters of detail in winding up a debate.
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  My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) expressed the hope that I would take my duties seriously. In the division of duties in my Department, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has a great deal to do with culture and the arts and things of that nature, and I have assumed prime responsibility for building. I take these things very seriously, indeed—
  Mr. Loughlin: Before my right hon. Friend leaves the previous point to which he referred, will he deal with the faulty house construction mentioned by the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington), in connection with which I asked him to ensure that these contractors were not given future contracts by his Department?
  Mr. Pannell: The answer is that I cannot necessarily condemn a contractor because something has gone wrong with a building. I have been long enough in the Ministry and in local government to know that all sorts of things can go wrong from time to time. We do, of course, insist that contractors are kept up to standard. It is in their own interests to see that they do, and I have explained the steps that have been taken.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Devonport raised a lot of questions about the Navy. I can only say that I went to the department dealing with Navy works not very long ago, where we spoke about these sort of things in her constituency. We are trying to do rather better for the Navy. The hon. Lady knows full well that Navy building is almost an innovation. It has come up only very recently. I hope in due time myself to pay a visit when I go down there.
  One of the things we are careful about on new estates is to lay out the gardens. We employ a landscape architect for that purpose. We are considering amenity as far as possible. I am quite certain that we build as cheaply as local authorities—
  Dame Joan Vickers: Can the Minister tell us how the cost of flats compares with that of houses? We want that information in order to see how many units we can get.
  Mr. Pannell: I cannot give that figure off the cuff, but the figure of £3,000 a bedroom for other ranks is averaged

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  out to cover both houses and flats. And, of course, the cost of the new quarters will be spread over a life of 60 years. If that is not specific enough, I will take it up in the Department tomorrow—
  Mr. Costain: The figure is surely not £3,000 a bedroom?
  Mr. Pannell: If I said that, I am sorry. I have spoken of £3,000 for a three-bedroomed dwelling for other ranks.
  I do not know that I have got very much left to reply to in this debate. Everybody here is concerned to ensure that the Services are better looked after—I am not making a political point here—in the future than they have been in the past. We must ensure that as we develop industrialised systems, and productivity rises, they get their fair share. They are people that deserve of us and of this Parliament the very best we can give them. To that end my Ministry will do its best.
  Mr. Sharples: Will the Minister deal with two points? The first is the question of interest rates, on which he interrupted my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw). The second is the question of development contracts under the terms of the Statute. This is a most important matter, but he has not touched on it.
  Mr. Pannell: I do not think there is much in the last point. The hon. Gentleman is probably on a better point about interest rates. We borrow money from the Treasury at the same rate as that at which it gets it. That is what we mean by the most favourable rates within the Act.
  Mr. Sharples: The right hon. Gentleman said that the wording of the Bill was the same as that of the previous Acts. Will he correct that? I have the previous Acts before me.
  Mr. Pannell: Of course, there is a technical difference. I will give the hon. Gentleman that point.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. lfor Davies.]
  Committee Tomorrow.

  TRANSPORT, STROUD
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ifor Davies.]
  10.7 p.m.
  Mr. Anthony Kershaw: I welcome this opportunity to raise the question of transport in the Stroud area. The Stroud, Tetbury and Berkeley area is characterised by a plateau which crumbles down into the Severn by a number of steeply wooded valleys scored by streams which run into the big river. In the valleys there is considerable industry, much of it of great antiquity. The traffic, therefore, is heavy. The terrain is steep and the roads are winding. Therefore, transport presents a particular problem, and the gradual but increasing reduction of the public facilities available to my constituents is causing them vexation and anxiety. I am afraid that I must raise a number of detailed points with the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. Each of them is perhaps a minor point, but cumulatively they amount to something very important to those living in the Stroud area.
  I start with Tetbury. It is now some time since the Tetbury-Kemble railway line was closed. When it was first proposed that it should be closed, I was able to raise the matter on the Adjournment and, whether for that reason or another, it was a source of great satisfaction to me and to others that the railway was not closed but a diesel car was put on instead. Unfortunately, this has now been removed. The result, I admit, does not affect a great many people, but those whom it affects have been dealt a heavy blow.
  For example, I have here a letter from an old lady who has recently come to live in Tetbury. The closure of the railway line has virtually deprived her of the possibility of leaving Tetbury at all, except by private transport, which she is not wealthy enough to afford. The bus services which connect Tetbury to the junction at Kemble are not good, and in particular they deprive people who have to make use of them of the opportunity which many had before of going to London and back in one day. It is technically possible, but one can spend only an hour or so in London and this is no use to shoppers.

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  The railway line between Tetbury and Kemble is in process of being demolished. I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to what use the line of the track is to be put. It would make an ideal footpath or bridle path, but unfortunately the bridges are being demolished. I should also like to ask what is to happen to Tetbury Railway Station, which occupies a substantial and important area in Tetbury itself.
  I turn next to the area of Dursley and Berkeley. The passenger train services in this part of the world have been entirely discontinued. A fairly large number of my constituents work in Bristol or in Gloucester. There are now no trains at all for them and they must go by bus or private transport. Can consideration again be given to the possibility of reopening Berkeley Road Station to passengers? It lies more or less half-way between Gloucester and Bristol. I am sure that it would be fairly extensively used. It is still intact and could be utilised again.
  The buses which are supposed to be a substitute for the trains are really no substitute at all. They are much slower and more expensive and the times are not so suitable. I do not blame the Bristol Bus Company for this. The company always does its best, and I have found that correspondence with it is intelligent and illuminating, but the fact is that, for a longish journey of 20 miles or so, a bus, particularly over winding roads, is not so suitable and cannot take the place of a train.
  In general, we wait to hear what may be the outcome of the conversations which, we understand, are taking place about a possible reduction of the fuel duty for the benefit of rural bus services in particular, and perhaps we may be told something about that fairly soon. Nevertheless, even if the price of the fuel were to come down by a marginal amount, none of the long bus services in my constituency except one, the service between Dursley and Stroud, at present pays.
  Has consideration been given to the possibility of combining the post and the bus services, as is done in Continental countries? It seems to me that there could be a saving in public administration in this way which might, in addition, be for the convenience of the public.
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  In the circumstances, it is not surprising that those who live in the area of Dursley and Berkeley and work in Bristol or Gloucester have in many cases decided that either they must provide their own transport or they must give up their homes. If they provide their own transport and go by car, they must necessarily use the A38. I shall not weary the Minister or the House yet again by my oft-repeated criticism of this notorious highway save only to say that, over almost its entire length between Gloucester and Bristol, is a three-lane highway. The Ministry of Transport maintains, though I and others, I believe, have great difficulty in believing it, that three lanes are safer than two. However that may be, what is perfectly certain is that three lanes marked out with alternate passing lines is safer than either, and why the Ministry steadily refuses to take this action over the whole stretch of the A38 between Gloucester and Bristol I cannot understand. The expense would be minimal. The local authorities are in favour of it. The Minister has currently before him a letter from the Quedgeley Parish Council asking him to take this action, and I urge him to give a favourable reply.
  I come now to the village of Painswick. Painswick is an ancient and beautiful village which has the misfortune to lie along a trunk road. The crossroads in the middle of the village is confined between buildings only 12 feet apart. As the main road approaches downhill and fairly steeply, drivers who are not familiar with the area tend to approach the crossroads much too fast, and there have been a number of accidents there. The walls of the buildings are scored by passing trucks which have struck them. The danger here is particularly to pedestrians and shop fronts, and I dare say that not a week passes without some damage or danger. For instance, only the other day, the vicar's wife was knocked down in a shop doorway and badly hurt.
  There is now a proposal, shortly to be carried out, to put traffic lights at the crossroads. This will help, but nothing will really save this village both from the danger and from being smothered by motor traffic, especially in the summer, except a by-pass. My question to the Minister, therefore, is: when will the Painswick by-pass be built?

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  Next, the problem of public transport in the Stroud valley. Everything I have said about the difficult terrain and narrow roads applies to the Stroud Valley, if I may say so, "with knobs on". The town itself is a serious bottleneck. A by-pass is planned, and I have nothing to say in criticism of that. The plan is proceeding as well as finance and other considerations permit. At the moment, however, nobody denies that Stroud itself is a serious bottleneck and that the road system is inadequate.
  It was, therefore, with great dismay that we learned that the Chalford-Gloucester rail-car service was to be closed. This was in the time of the previous Government. At that time I made most vigorous protests to the Minister, while recognising the overall validity of the Beeching reforms. I received many petitions, including a very large and well done one from the Wycliffe College whose students used the railcar. Many other people have testified to the value of the railcar to them.
  The closure played an important part in the General Election in the Stroud constituency. The Labour Party there neglected no opportunity to blame the Tory Government and me in particular for the railcar closure. It issued a pamphlet which leading members of the party distributed by riding on the railcar in the evening. The pamphlet said:
  "The Labour Party believe that the railcar inquiry was a farce; the case for retention was proved; Marples and the Conservative Government were determined to close it all along. If Beeching's ideas are applied to buses, as they will be if the Tories are returned, the rural bus services will also disappear. Toryism in transport means chaos, closure and paralysis. Labour will carry out a survey of all local transport needs during which all 'major' rail closure will be stopped. Stroud Labour candidate … is convinced that this survey will reveal the need for the railcar and is confident of its re-opening."
  That is one more Labour pledge gone down the wind.
  Mr. Charles Loughlin: No.
  Mr. Kershaw: After the General Election I telephoned and wrote to the Minister to inquire whether he would honour this Labour Party pledge. For a fortnight or so there was no reply, and then there was a prevaricating reply, and finally we gathered that nothing would
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  be done. The Labour Government have, indeed, in this as in so many other matters, got the worst of both worlds. They have kept Dr. Beeching's closures and have got rid of Dr. Beeching.
  Nevertheless, we hoped that in fulfilment of their election pledges the Labour Government might decide to restore the railcar service. However, that has now become impossible even if they wished to because British Railways, with energy and promptness worthy of a better cause, started on a Sunday in December to demolish the stations and halts. I asked the Minister to halt this destruction, but he refused, and now the work is almost done. Even useful foot and bridge crossings such as those at Stonehouse and Downfield are being blocked or demolished. However, there are two halts which are still open—Cashes Green and Ebley—and the Stroud Urban District Council has suggested that the diesel unit operating between Swindon and Gloucester should stop at those halts. I should like to know whether that is possible.
  The Minister has received from me and others, especially the Stroud Urban District Council, representations about alternative bus services. He has not so far found it possible to vary the present arrangement. I ask him to look at this again.
  Leaving aside that it is difficult for a bus to substitute for a quicker and cheaper train, the services are not adequate at present. For example, there are no through buses from Chalford to Gloucester in the morning. The Minister says—he is right—that there is a connection in Stonehouse with the train, which allows one at some unearthly hour in the morning 12 minutes to catch the train. That sounds good enough in theory, but in practice the congestion in the Stroud area often results in the bus being late.
  The bus station is much too far from the railway station for one to be sure of getting there in 12 minutes, unless one is young and fit. This is, I think, a typical example of the way in which a planner in Whitehall imagines that connections can be made where, in practice, they never can be. I suggest that this train is not an adequate substitute. It is, in any case, very erratic in its timing.
  Despite my undertaking, I have burdened the Joint Parliamentary Secretary

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  with a great deal of detail, but I must mention one other thing. Stonehouse is half-way to Gloucester from Stroud and normally anyone who lives there and wants to go to Gloucester has to return to Stroud in order to get the bus. This does not seem convenient.
  I ask the hon. Gentleman to review, after a reasonable time, the whole problem of bus timings in this area in substitution for trains and I shall certainly jog his memory in this regard. The closure of the Stonehouse (Bristol Road) Station to passenger services has made it equally difficult to go from Stonehouse to Bristol. The track remains in use, however. It is hard now for those who must go to Bristol to have to go to Gloucester and then on to work from there. If they go the same day this adds over 54 miles to their journey from Stonehouse to Bristol, quite apart from the additional expense.
  Finally, there are rumours that the main-line services on the London-Gloucester line may be curtailed and even abandoned. I ask the hon. Gentleman for a categorical assurance that there is no intention of closing Stroud, Stonehouse and Kemble stations, both for passengers and freight. Nothing less than such an assurance, which I hope that he is in a position to give, will give the necessary confidence for the expansion and prosperity of the Stroud area.
  10.22 p.m.
  The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Stephen Swingler): I will answer the points of which the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) gave me notice for the purpose of the debate. He has covered a wide range of very detailed points about the locality he represents. First, I want to make it plain that the hon. Gentleman talks a great deal in this House, but that it is apparent that he does not listen too much.
  The present Government have announced, and are in process of setting up, regional councils and planning boards for the purpose, amongst other things, of surveying the country's transport needs, and we have made it plain that if the results of these surveys show that rail services ought to be restored, or other changes made in the priorities for transport, we will exercise powers or, if
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  necessary, take powers to bring those changes about.
  In the meantime, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has made it clear, and is carrying out the pledge, that he will halt major rail closures. That he is carrying out that pledge is shown by the fact that out of 13 closure proposals from the Railways Board considered since we took office five have been rejected by my right hon. Friend on the ground that they are major closures that might prejudice the fulfilment of future needs of regional planning.
  Now I come to the closures mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. I will deal, first, with Tetbury and Kemble. In this case, the consent was given by the right hon. Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples) on 13th January, 1964, and all the services on that line were withdrawn more than 10 months ago. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Chalford-Gloucester rail-car service. In this case, the right hon. Member for Wallasey gave his consent on 30th July, 1964, and the trains were taken off on 2nd November. The hon. Member also mentioned the stations at Kemble, Stroud and Stonehouse, but I must point out that the Railways Board has made no proposals to close these stations and that, according to my information, they are in operation.
  Those are the facts about these closures. My right hon. Friend has no power under the present law to revoke closures agreed by the Tory Minister of Transport, but from the time we have taken office we have looked at all proposals according to the criteria set out by my right hon. Friend on 4th November, and we have rejected those which we consider to be major proposals.
  My right hon. Friend made it plain on 4th November that he had agreed with the Railways Board that in all cases where before we took office arrangements had not been made for the disposal of the track, the track would be retained, because the regional councils and boards might report that these services should be restored. Of course, we know that there are difficulties involved for the Railways Board in the maintenance of the track and of the stations, and it may well be that because of these difficulties the Board will feel that it is compelled to demolish some

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  of the installations, some of the buildings at the stations and so on. We insist that the track should be retained in these cases, because we regard them as absolutely essential for future planning. In the cases mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, the track is being retained.
  I now come to something over which my right hon. Friend has power—the variation of the conditions attached to the consent to the closure proposals by his predecessor the right hon. Member for Wallasey. My right hon. Friend has made it plain that he is wide open to representations from any quarter to vary the conditions of consent where concrete evidence can be produced that the alternative services are not at present meeting essential needs, but I must emphasise that we have to consider the essential needs of the people who are affected by rail closures in these places and that under that heading we cannot consider demands for the improvement of services which have been put forward in the past and which relate to conditions prior to the closure.
  We have received no representations about alternative bus services for the Tetbury-Kemble line. So far as we know, the services are satisfactory and if that is not so, we are open to any representations which may be made. We have received representations about the Chalford-Gloucester line, for example, from the Stroud Urban District Council, the Chalford Parish Council and the Stonehouse Parish Council about the adequacy of the alternative services. As a result, checks on the bus services have recently been made and so far as we have been able to find out, in relation to Stroud, for example, ample capacity on the buses appears to be available.
  The Chalford Parish Council requested a direct service to Gloucester, but no supporting evidence of need was submitted by the council. At the moment, we are considering new proposals received yesterday from the Chalford Parish Council. We have received representations from the Stonehouse Parish Council for improved facilities for buses, but these representations concern a very small number of people. I am informed, for example, that there would be two
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  people to travel to Gloucester and three travelling in the direction of Bristol. The proposal is that what would be a very heavily subsidised service should be laid on for these people. We have every sympathy with their position as a result of the rail closures, but it is impossible to consider the provision of special bus services for such very small groups of people.
  In the brief time that remains to me, I turn to the question of the road problems raised by the hon. Member. He raised, for example, the points put forward to us by the Quedgeley Parish Council. We have recently received a letter from the Quedgeley Parish Council concerning safety on the A.38 road between Elmore Lane and Quedgeley Roundabout. We have instructed our divisional road engineer to investigate this matter as speedily a possible. I am, however, informed that he needs to get more detailed information about visibility on this section of the road and he is in touch with the county surveyor to get this information. I do not propose to say more on that subject now, because I do not wish to prejudge these investigations, except to say that we are most concerned with the question of safety on the A.38 and that after there have been consultations between the divisional road engineer and the county surveyor we shall consider these proposals sympathetically and speedily.
  Finally, I come to the position at Painswick. We recognise that there is a traffic problem in the village of Painswick, where the A.46 trunk road is narrow. There is congestion, especially at peak periods. We accept that the widening of the road would be difficult, if not impossible, because we know that buildings of architectural and historic interest stand in the way. Therefore, in principle, we accept that there is a need for a by-pass of the village as a longterm solution. Frankly, however, on present criteria we cannot give this project the priority that, obviously, the local people would desire, simply on account of the fact that there are much more difficult and dangerous areas to be dealt with and our funds for several years ahead are already allocated to schemes which are far more urgent.
  We have, of course, to bear in mind that after a few years, by the end of

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  this decade at least, the M.5 motorway between Gloucester and Bristol will remove a lot of the long-distance traffic from this road and will, we trust, relieve the situation and improve traffic conditions through the village.
  At the same time, we are considering what traffic management measures might give some immediate relief. On this, we are in consultation with the parish council and the Gloucestershire County Council and the police. As the hon. Member mentioned, it has now been decided to install a system of traffic lights in New Street. Plans have been prepared by the county council and tenders are shortly to be invited. As the hon. Member will know, there is already a 30 m.p.h. speed limit through the village.
  These are the measures which, we hope, will improve the situation and give some relief in the village whilst we are pushing ahead with the M.5 motorway, which will give greater relief by 1970. At the same time, we look forward to the time when we shall be able to get a proper by-pass for the village of Pains-wick.
  I have endeavoured to deal with the points of which the hon. Member gave me notice. I come back to the point that the kind of problems that the hon. Member has raised tonight spotlight the urgent need, which has existed for many years, for regional surveys and for proper co-ordination of the provision of transport facilities throughout the country.
  It is on this that my right hon. Friend is now placing maximum emphasis. We intend to go forward as rapidly as possible to carry out these regional
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  surveys. Where it is shown that new facilities are required, or the restoration of facilities which have been closed under the previous régime, we shall not hesitate to take the necessary powers to carry out those measures.
  10.35 p.m.
  Mr. W. A. Wilkins: The Parliamentary Secretary has dealt more than kindly with the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) after the rather aggressive manner in which he put forward his pleas tonight. It would have been interesting to have known what sort of answers he received from his right hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples) if and when he put forward those same proposals to that right hon. Gentleman when he occupied the office of Minister of Transport.
  I rise only to tell the Parliamentary Secretary that I have today tabled a Question, to which I hope he will give particular attention, asking how many hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have bombarded his Department with requests for the reopening or the keeping open of lines where there were closures or proposed closures during the régime of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. The Parliamentary Secretary has taken some note in the past of the number of Questions from those benches—
  The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock, and the debate having been continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at twenty-three minutes to Eleven o'clock.